When Sam Hornish Jr. ran a couple of Busch Series races near the tail end of 2006, it was seen by some as just a lark - an opportunity to dip his toe in the stock car waters without all the risks involved with taking a complete plunge.

But listening to Hornish in mid-2007 clarifies things a bit.

The three-time IndyCar Series champion is looking for new and different conquests, and he thinks he's found one by stepping out of his precise and finely tuned open-wheel race car and climbing into a hulking 3,400-pound stock car.

"The reason that I am interested in this is because it's a challenge," Hornish said after his very successful stock car run at Michigan International Speedway last weekend in the first ARCA race of his career.

Hornish qualified on the pole for that race, then fought back from deep in the field after pit stop problems to finish second.

Hornish, the Defiance native who won the 2006 Indianapolis 500 for Team Penske, said that when he signed with team owner and racing legend Roger Penske before the start of the 2004 season, a foray into stock car racing was always an option.

"Penske Racing allows me to do this and keep my other job," said Hornish, who qualified eighth for today's Iowa Corn Indy 250 race at Iowa Speedway. "It's not like I'm doing a side venture where I'm gambling everything in my whole career and hoping that it works."

Penske not only consented to the move, but also put the resources of the stock car racing arm of his empire behind Hornish.

"I get an opportunity to go out and try it out and see if it works," Hornish said. "Not a lot of people get an opportunity to do that, so I've really tried to seize it as best I could."

Juggling the 17-event IndyCar Series schedule with a more aggressive Busch Series involvement, Hornish has run five of the 16 events in Busch this season, with plans to race in 11 Busch events before year's end. Hornish also ran in the Crown Royal IROC Series in 2002, 2003, and 2006.

He said that after his multiple IndyCar season championships, 19 victories on the circuit, and the much-coveted Indy 500 crown, the stock car events now provide him with a new and very different frontier.

"I feel that we've had success in the open-wheel category," Hornish said. "And I know that it sounds strange to be 27 and say there's really nowhere for me to go up in open-wheel racing, but there's no way that I would ever be able to go to Formula One - I'm past the age where they look for drivers to put in cars like that.

"As long as I continue to race the Indy cars, I feel like this is making me better, because it's making me more of an all-around driver, since it changes your adaptability."

Team Penske president Tim Cindric said the toughest adjustment for Hornish might not involve racing stock cars, but be centered on the off-track obligations associated with NASCAR.

"I think Sam has demonstrated that he can probably race about anything you put him in, so I don't see that as an issue," Cindric said. "But he's a guy who likes his family time, and the demands of that schedule on the stock car side, and the sponsor obligations - those things change your lifestyle."

Following his strong showing at MIS, Hornish talked about how anxious he is to return to that two-mile oval in mid-August for the CARFAX 250 Busch Series race.

"That's my next Busch race, and hopefully the experience and knowledge we gained in the ARCA race will be a valuable thing as we prepare for the Busch race," Hornish said.

"I'm a student at this, still trying to learn as much as I can. A lot of people have asked me what the toughest transition is, coming over here from the Indy cars and doing these stock car races, and really it's the fact I don't get much practice time."

Hornish said that for the immediate future he will continue to balance the time he spends in the two radically different racing formats. As the defending IndyCar Series champion, those obligations still take priority.

"I think a lot of the reasoning behind this is to see if I can do it, but I'm aware that it's a gamble whichever way I go," Hornish said.

"If I just stayed and raced exclusively in the Indy cars, you'd always kind of wonder what else you could have done. And if you jump over to stock cars and find out you're not good at it, you could end up not liking that outcome much, either. Right now, I'm interested in the challenge it presents, and seeing how much I can learn about the stock car side of racing."

Contact Matt Markey at:

mmarkey@theblade.com

or 419-724-6510.

First Published June 24, 2007, 11:48 a.m.