For open-wheel converts, it's been a winding road to success

SONOMA, Calif.

One is gone, another won't race today and the others continue to struggle in NASCAR Sprint Cup racing.

Juan Pablo Montoya re-opened a pipeline from open-wheel racing to NASCAR, but since his arrival from Formula One late in 2006 he's the only recent convert to have any success.

This year's rookie class featured a heralded group of open-wheel racers short on stock-car experience: 2007 Indianapolis 500 winner Dario Franchitti, 2006 Indy 500 champ Sam Hornish Jr., ex-Formula One champion Jacques Villeneuve and former Champ Car driver Patrick Carpentier.

Villeneuve failed to make the Daytona 500, couldn't find any sponsorship and hasn't been back in a car since. Franchitti missed five races after he suffered a broken left ankle in a Nationwide crash at Talladega. He did not qualify for today's race at Infineon Raceway.

Carpentier, who has failed to qualify for three races this season, starts 37th, and Hornish, who spun and crashed in separate incidents during Saturday's practice, starts 17th. Hornish ranks the highest among those drivers in the season standings at 33rd.

Even Montoya had his struggles last year, but nothing like the woes of these other drivers. Montoya won this race a year ago and finished 20th in the points. His season, lauded by many, has gained more notice considering the struggles of the next wave of open-wheel drivers.

The newcomers, once accustomed to visiting Victory Lane, now are satisfied with top 20 finishes and simple improvements.

"I just want to get to the point where I feel like I'm giving them everything that they give me with the car," Hornish said of his team.

It isn't easy for this group. The cars are dramatically different, weighing nearly twice as much as the Indy cars and handling much worse.

Even so, expectations were up for this group this weekend because they had more road-course experience than many Cup drivers. Maybe it will help today, but so far it hasn't shown to be such an advantage this weekend. Just to think these drivers will do well because of their varied background, though, is almost unfair to them.

"Some of us, we take a lot of heat sometimes for coming over here and struggling, but it's more difficult than you could ever put into words," said A.J. Allmendinger, who moved from Champ Car to Cup last year. "This is completely different. It's almost like starting over again."

And doing so without the tools they're used to using. Computers and telemetry are prevalent in open-wheel, but are restricted in stock-car racing. That means communication between driver and crew is more critical since Cup teams can't download information from the car after a practice run to measure various aspects of the vehicle.

"There's a thousand tricks and a thousand ways to drive the car and different race lines on the track and ways to set it up and you've got no computers and that's what's hurting me," Carpentier said.

Franchitti understands Carpentier's struggles.

"It's a huge difference when you're learning something," Franchitti said before he was one of four cars not to make the race. "When you have a lot of experience, you don't really rely on them so much because you know what you're doing, you know what the limits are. You know the cars, the tires. When you come into something new like this, you have to show up race weekends and figure out for yourself where you're fast and where you're slow, what the car needs to feel

like."

That's not an easy transition, as the struggles of these drivers indicate.

"It just takes time," Carpentier said. "It's really, really competitive, and it's one of the toughest things I've ever done."