Hornish can add fatherhood to list of challenges

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.

As practice begins today at Daytona International Speedway, a deeper meaning to the start of the NASCAR Sprint Cup season resonates beyond how many races Dale Earnhardt Jr. will win at Hendrick Motorsports.

This is the first day of school all over again for many drivers. There is hope and fear, too. Change brings such anxiety along for the ride.

Those emotions magnify for a few drivers. Rookie Sam Hornish Jr. is balancing first-time fatherhood with his move to stock-car racing. J.J. Yeley is seeking to prove that downsizing from Joe Gibbs Racing to a one-car team can revive his career. Jeff Gordon is focusing on a new approach to collect the title that slipped away last year. Kyle Busch is wondering what will happen when he pits for his new team.

Hornish, among a ballyhooed group of open-wheelers moving to NASCAR, arrived in Daytona this week three days after his daughter Addison's birth. No challenge will be greater than fatherhood, but this Cup season could come close.

Hornish joined NASCAR because there was little left to achieve in the Indy Racing League, where he won two championships and the 2006 Indianapolis 500.

"The big thing for me was, what's the next big challenge?" said Hornish, who failed to qualify for his first six Cup races before running two races last year. "What's going to keep me motivated for the next 10 years of my life?

"This is full of all kinds of possibilities. Good and bad."

Yeley also looks at the opportunities of his new ride. He struggled for two seasons and then lost his ride as teammates Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin excelled.

He joins Hall of Fame Racing, a one-car satellite team of Gibbs that has four top-10 finishes in its first two seasons. Critics say the move will slip Yeley further out of public view, given that just one driver from a single-car team placed in the top 25 in the past three seasons. Yeley is undaunted.

"I have to prove that I can go out and get the job done," he said. "We had decent finishes. At the end of the season, the points probably didn't reflect how well we probably ran throughout the year, but it still wasn't as good as what my teammates had run.

"I just never felt I got what I needed to make myself a better race car driver. Now, I'm a single-car team. Whatever I need, they're going to get for me."

Gordon also searches for something only his team can give him: faster cars. Gordon won six races and scored a series-record 30 top-10 finishes (in 36 races), yet lost the title to Jimmie Johnson.

Gordon admits he and his team need more aggressive setups. He couldn't outrun Johnson during the Chase and watched as his Hendrick Motorsports teammate won four consecutive races late in the season to take the points lead and pull away.

"We want that performance to step up," Gordon said. " We've started to see this offseason being much more aggressive on the setups, just starting that way. We'll see if it pays off. So far, it has been great."

So far, though, teams have only tested. The question is how well will he race?

Races also are a question for Busch as he moves from Hendrick, relinquishing his spot for Dale Earnhardt Jr., to Gibbs.

"The most I'm uncertain about is how (crew chief) Steve Addington calls his races," Busch said. "I'm not sure what kind of adjustments he makes to the car when adjustments are needed. Hopefully, we'll be close enough after practices that we won't be struggling anywhere where we can have some pretty simple days in the race."

Answers will begin to come to Busch and others. Soon they'll find out if the decisions they made were the right decisions.