Talla-f**king-dega!

To be honest Dave I don't think Hornish will make the grade in NASCAR. Just my personal view here, but the impression he gives me is that something essential is missing in his makeup. It's as if he lacks grit, or a will to push through difficult circumstances and force a car to the front.

Normally I would have said "haha, no way, he is an Indy 500 winner, he'll do ok" but he just isn't. He has had much more running than any of the other drivers to make the swap, has more oval experience than most of them, and has much better equipment than any of them, yet can't seem to get the job done.

Even Franchitti, Speed and Villeneuve, who have only ran 1 race (well 2 now for JV since the truck race tonight) have looked far more impressive than him. It's just strange, but reminds me of his IROC races when he struggled. He seems just not be able to drive the big heavy stock cars like he can with the Indy Cars.

Neil, if you look at the qualifying times then it shows there would be even more Toyotas in the race, but the qualifying system didn't allow it. AJ Allmendinger was the next car to be in the race, but he was just slightly too slow compared to the under-35ers, despite running a time good enough for a top 10. Boris in a Roush car DNQed too! It's clear that the cars that had to qualify on time were running dedicated qualifying setups and not race setups like the other cars, but thats still a massive leap in times for the Toyotas.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
theRacingLine.net
SportsCarArchives.com

Not sure it's possible to compare Hornish with the guys who haven't done a single Busch race.

---

Hornish has more experience and better quality equipment and still isn't qualifying. Whilst Talladega is more of a lottery on qualifying, and one that Toyota have gotten nailed, he has failed to DQ at every other race he has attempted too. That says it all tbh

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
theRacingLine.net
SportsCarArchives.com

Yes, but has nothing to do with your original point that used an ARCA race for comparison.

---

Also used a couple of NASCAR races in the comparison too

Hornish's attempted route to Nextel Cup is somewhat similar to Montoya and Villeneuve's. A fast track with limited seat time in the lower series, and then getting into the deep end as soon as possible. Hornish started NASCAR last year and whilst he's had one or two (quite poor) Busch runs, his failure to qualify for a Nextel event with top equipment is quite surprising, especially when even AJ Allmendinger has managed quite a few races recently.

Out of all the drivers to make the move recently (Montoya, Villeneuve, Franchitti, Speed, Allmendinger, Hornish) his runs have been by far the least impressive, even taking into account that 2 of them have only run ARCA so far IMO. He was meant to be going full time in Nextel Cup in 2008 but I doubt he'd give up an IRL Championship contending seat for a slight chance of maybe qualifying for a couple of Nextel events.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
theRacingLine.net
SportsCarArchives.com