Homestead thrillers par for IndyCar course

Updated: March 23, 2007, 4:41 PM ET

Few tracks have given the IndyCar Series the kind of frenetic finishes Homestead-Miami Speedway has. John Oreovicz writes that makes the place perfect to open the season.

Comment Email Print Share

By John Oreovicz
Special to ESPN.com
Archive

The Fast Life: 2007 IndyCar Starts Now

The Fast Life: 2007 IndyCar Starts NowTags: Autoracing

Learn More » Report a bug » Feedback »

VIDEO PLAYLIST

No matter what the track configuration or banking, Homestead-Miami Speedway has rarely served as a great showcase for NASCAR racing. That's definitely not the case for the IndyCar Series, which opens its 17-race 2007 campaign on the 1.5-mile South Florida oval Saturday night with the XM Satellite Radio 300 (8:00 p.m., ESPN2).

Doug Benc/Getty ImagesIndyCar Series champion Sam Hornish Jr. has had more than a little success at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

There have been a number of classic Homestead finishes since the IndyCar Series began running there in 2001, topped by last year's thriller between Helio Castroneves and Dan Wheldon. Eventual series champion Sam Hornish Jr. led 145 of the 200 laps, but he caught a bad break with a yellow flag during his final pit stop and had to work back through the pack to finish third. That put his Team Penske running mate Castroneves in position to take the win, but Wheldon had other ideas, driving around the outside of the Brazilian to nose ahead at the line by 0.0147 of a second.

In a racing series defined by its frenetic finishes, Homestead '06 was the IndyCar Series at its finest. Yet the action as a whole only got closer throughout the rest of the season, resulting in a four-man battle for championship honors down the stretch, with the aforementioned trio joined by Wheldon's Target Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Scott Dixon.

For 2007, Penske and Ganassi are likely to enjoy less of an advantage over two-time IndyCar Series champion Andretti Green Racing and its revamped four-driver lineup, and every other team is fully optimistic that it will be closer to the front.

"I think a lot of teams got a wake-up call last season and they have worked hard over the last few months to make sure they are where they need to be," remarked Castroneves.

Homestead is the perfect launching pad for the season and the event will mark a significant milestone in the career of three-time series champion Hornish because it will be his 100th IndyCar Series start. Super Sam has won 18 times in 99 tries, making him far and away the most successful driver during the Indy Racing League era since 1996. In fact, Scott Sharp is the only driver to have reached the 100-race milestone in the IRL, during which he scored eight wins.

Hornish has put together a very impressive career in Indy cars, which the Team Penske PR staff put into perspective against some significant open-wheel names from the past. Ironically, the closest driver to Hornish statistically is Penske legend Rick Mears, who won 20 of his first 100 USAC, CART and CRL (anyone remember the short-lived Championship Racing League open-wheel merger in 1980?) sanctioned "Indy-style" races.

"It must mean I'm getting older," laughed Hornish, a good-humored Ohio native. "But at 27, it's really hard to think of myself as a seasoned veteran.

"It's a pretty neat milestone and hopefully we'll be able to cap it off with a win."

There's a good chance of that happening, because Hornish has won three times and added two more top-5 finishes in six Homestead starts. He won in his Penske debut in 2004 and looked like he had last year's race under control until circumstances out of his control took it away.

But then again, Wheldon might be an equally good bet. The confident Englishman claimed the last two IndyCar season openers driving for two different teams and his move to steal the 2006 Homestead race from Castroneves measured about a 13 on a scale of 10 in terms of bravery and commitment.

Dixon won at Homestead in 2003 in his IndyCar Series debut and went on to win the series championship that year. He's the sleeper among the leading quartet.

Fernando Medina/WireImage.comVitor Meira and Panther Racing gave some of the bigger teams fits in 2006. Will he step up again in 2007?

"We feel that the Target team is in a strong position to contend for the IndyCar Series championship," said Ganassi managing director Mike Hull. "We have shown well at tests at Daytona and Homestead but that's not a lot of testing, and like everyone else we're waiting to see what the first race of the season holds to see where we really stand. You just can't make assumptions based on the past. This is a new season and everyone has a clean slate."

Andretti Green is hoping that 2007 looks more like 2004 and '05 than 2006, when the victory tally dropped to two. A wild card has been thrown into the four-car mix in the form of Danica Patrick, who has the opportunity to demonstrate she's here for the long run if she can keep pace with experienced veteran teammates Tony Kanaan and Dario Franchitti. But a more relevant comparison is with Marco Andretti, who is closer in age and experience, yet is already being considered a championship contender.

Patrick's former team, Rahal Letterman Racing, is hoping a streamlined all-American driver lineup of Scott Sharp and Jeff Simmons can rekindle the glory days of 2004, when Buddy Rice won three races for the team. The also-departed Rice leads a rejuvenated Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, which will field a second car for Sarah Fisher.

Vitor Meira and Panther Racing were often Penske and Ganassi's closest competition in 2006, and the resilient IndyCar Series stalwart should get a boost from Delphi Electronics sponsorship and a team partnership with Super Aguri Racing and driver Kosuke Matsuura. IRL founder Tony George's Vision Racing is also expanding in 2007, adding a third car for A.J. Foyt IV. Speaking of Foyts, new driver Darren Manning should push the famous No. 14 A.J. Foyt Racing car closer to the front.

Homestead-Miami Speedway actually has quite a festival planned. The 300-mile IndyCar Series race under the Saturday night lights wraps up the XM Satellite Radio SpeedJam, which also includes a Rolex Series Grand Am sports car race, 100-mile USAC Silver Crown and Indy Pro Series warm-up races, a concert by Australian rockers Jet and even a barbecue contest.

Whereas mediocre NASCAR racing at Homestead has usually played out before a packed house, the IndyCar Series has struggled to draw fans. The full slate of entertainment on tap coupled with the Saturday night time slot could reverse that trend.

John Oreovicz covers open-wheel racing for National Speed Sport News and ESPN.com.