IRL's Hornish takes stab at Busch Series

[Team Infidel]

Mercury News Wire Reports

Three-time Indy Racing League champion Sam Hornish Jr. will attempt to qualify a Penske Racing South Dodge today at Phoenix International Raceway for his first NASCAR Busch Series start.
The No. 39 Dodge that Hornish will drive has been raced four times this season by Kurt Busch, with three top-10 finishes, including a second in May at Charlotte.
``I've completed a lot of laps at Phoenix in an IndyCar the last several years,'' Hornish said. ``Hopefully, that experience will transfer to our preparations this week with the Busch car. We're taking a car that has had a great deal of success since its debut earlier this season with Kurt at Charlotte and I'm excited to get behind the wheel, run some laps and get a good finish on Saturday.''
• Indy Racing League veteran Scott Sharp is joining Rahal Letterman Racing, giving the team a second driver for next season.
Sharp will join returning driver Jeff Simmons with Rahal Letterman, which lost Danica Patrick to Andretti Green Racing and has not been able to line up a sponsor for 2004 Indy 500 winner Buddy Rice.
Sharp, 38, is the IRL's longest-tenured driver and has won nine races while driving in all 11 seasons since the series started. He finished 12th in the standings this past season while driving for Delphi Fernandez Racing. He finished fifth in the Texas and Richmond races.
• Crew member Craig Curione was suspended indefinitely by NASCAR this week for shoving Kevin Harvick on pit road Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway.
The push knocked Harvick, his wife and a NASCAR official to the ground. The Harvicks were not injured, but NASCAR official John Sacco was taken to the infield medical center because of a sprained ankle.
Curione, the front-tire-carrier for Scott Riggs, was fined $10,000, NASCAR officials said.
Curione was one of several crew members who approached Harvick minutes after the race and exchanged words with the driver, apparently over an incident late in the race.
Harvick was close behind Riggs when Riggs crashed while running third with seven laps to go. It appeared Harvick's car took the air off the rear deck of Riggs' car and Riggs was unable to maintain control.
When Harvick walked toward the infield media center, witnesses said Curione shoved him in the back. Harvick fell into his wife, DeLana, and she fell into a NASCAR official. All three tumbled to the ground.
• Tony Stewart's victory at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday helped Chevrolet tie its record for single-season victories in NASCAR's modern era, since 1972.
This year marks the third time Chevrolet has achieved 22 victories in one season. It set the mark in 1980 and tied it in 2004.
Stewart's victory was the 595th all-time for Chevy and the 471st of the modern era.
• Jeff Gordon, the four-time NASCAR champion, and Belgian model Ingrid Vandebosch were married Tuesday in a private ceremony in Mexico. Gordon and Vandebosch have been together since 2004. They appeared in the movie ``Taxi,'' in which Vandebosch played a bank robber and Gordon made an uncredited cameo appearance at her invitation.
Gordon announced his engagement in Sonoma in June, one day before winning the Dodge Save Mart 350.

 

[Team Infidel]

Can Earnhardt Jr. capture his 1st title?



JENNA FRYER

Associated Press

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Dale Earnhardt Jr. has worked his way up to third in the Chase for the championship standings - no easy feat considering the issues he had from flag to flag at Texas Motor Speedway.
First, he battled strep throat and sore joints, both of which required him to increase his intake of fluids. But all that extra drinking gave him a severe case of heartburn, and he felt so lousy he said it was hard to focus on finishing the race.
"The first part of the race, I was a mess - it was grueling for me," Earnhardt said. "I could concentrate for about three laps and then I'd have two laps to where I just couldn't get nothing done and I was just all over the place feeling sick."
When he finally found the will to continue, Earnhardt ran his No. 8 Chevrolet smack into the wall, causing considerable damage that dropped him back to 34th in the field. But his Dale Earnhardt Inc. crew made significant repairs to his car and Junior salvaged the day with a sixth-place finish.
It made Earnhardt believe his team finally has emerged as a championship contender.
"We've been called a lot of things, and it would be great to be called resilient," Earnhardt said. "This team is very strong and very dedicated. They carry me whenever I need it and vice versa, and it helps to have that. It really, really does."
Now he's got two weeks to see just how far this team really can go. He heads into Phoenix International Raceway just 78 points behind leader Jimmie Johnson, with Matt Kenseth sandwiched between the two.
If he's going to make up any ground, he knows it will have to come Sunday at Phoenix, where he went to Victory Lane in both 2003 and 2004 - making him one of just three drivers with multiple wins on the 1-mile track. The others are Jeff Burton and Davey Allison.
But Earnhardt's success at Phoenix - he's got four top-five finishes in the past six races there - doesn't come naturally. It took him time to figure out how to race in the desert.
"When I first started running there, I didn't get around the place very good," he said. "It was just a real hot, slick race track for me. I don't know what happened, but we showed up one week and this thing was just really, really fast and we've been fast ever since."
He'll need that speed Sunday if he's going to have any shot at the title.
Johnson is on another one of his mind-boggling rolls, finishing second or better the past four weeks. And Kevin Harvick, who currently sits fifth in the standings, swept the Busch and Cup events there in April and will look to do the same this weekend.
So there's little room for error, and Earnhardt has an idea where he needs to be heading into next week's season finale to have any chance at all.
"We need to be in reasonable striking distance going into Homestead," he said. "I'm really glad we're close. That's what you shoot for. We've got some hard, tough teams to beat, but I think we're putting up a great fight."
Still, everyone across the board acknowledges it will be difficult to beat Johnson, who had dropped to ninth after the Chase opener and has mounted another one of his furious comebacks to position himself as the driver to beat. He's the guy they are all chasing into Phoenix, and even Kenseth, who sits 17 points out of the lead, knows catching Johnson will be difficult.
"I'm not being a pessimist, but I'm being a realist - can we beat Jimmie Johnson on performance? Heck no," Kenseth said. "The guy has been first or second for the past four weeks ... looking at that, you just don't feel too confident."