While Jimmie Johnson goes into Sunday's Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway with a commanding 183-point lead over Carl Edwards in the Chase for the championship, Sam Hornish Jr. holds a mere 2-point margin over Regan Smith in the duel for rookie of the year.
"It's a tough thing because every time I feel like, 'All right, I ought to be doing really good,' I look in my rearview mirror and Regan's there," Hornish said Saturday. "I feel like we always kind of end up pretty close to each other. Probably about 75 percent of the time we're within two or three positions of each other, so I guess that's part of the rookie learning curve and being where we're at."
Hornish, a three-time IRL IndyCar Series champion and the 2006 Indianapolis 500 winner, just about had to start from scratch when he decided to make the move to NASCAR late last season. Smith came to Cup in a more conventional way, serving his apprenticeship in trucks and the Nationwide Series.
With the difference in background, each has his own learning curve.
"Definitely the biggest hurdle for me is getting used to the races being a little bit longer," Hornish said. "I've had all that experience running the IndyCars and a lot of times I consider those sprint races because they're 200 laps or 200 miles.
"Everything that we run over here is 400 or 500 laps or 400 or 500 miles. Sometimes pacing yourself to get to the end with all the fenders intact, keeping yourself not racing too hard the first three-quarters of the race and keeping yourself there for the end of it has been a little bit of a difficult thing."
Smith said it's NASCAR's new Car of Tomorrow that has been the toughest adjustment for him.
"The (Nationwide) car last year drove completely different than (this car) does on the Cup side," Smith noted. "You take away the fact that I think it's 100 horsepower difference, something like that, that affects the driving ability of it. Adjusting to that, adjusting to the fact that the car doesn't have as much downforce, it feels like it's on top of the racetrack more."
Both agree on one thing, though. Winning rookie of the year would be a huge accomplishment.
"We set out at the beginning of the year what our goals were going to be and we wanted to be Raybestos Rookie of the Year," said Hornish, who drives for Penske Racing. "We wanted to try and be in the top 20 in points. Well, we're not close to the top-20 in points and we feel if we would have gotten a lot of things a little bit more correct we would have been quite a bit higher up there. You only have one opportunity to win Raybestos Rookie of the Year, so you want to go out there and try to do it and get that accomplished."
Smith, driving for Dale Earnhardt Inc., echoed those sentiments.
"Neither one of us has had the kind of year that we expected to have this year," he said. "We both wanted to be sitting top 20 in points and then have some good top-10 finishes by now. Ultimately, the rookie thing would be a real cool thing to bring home at the end of the day and say, 'We still captured this.' It means a lot.
"It's been a tight battle and it's going to go right down to the last lap at Homestead."
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AMERICAN WORKER: So far, luck is holding for Hale Hughes. The next step depends on Jeff Gordon.
Hughes, a resident of Woodville, Texas, was selected by Williamson-Dickie Manufacturing Co., makers of Dickies, as "American Worker of the Year." The oil field roughneck and safety manager was chosen among thousands of online entries as one of six regional finalists. The choices were based on commitment to their work and the ability to be a genuine example of an American worker.
The same committee then chose Hughes the overall winner after an interview.
Besides winning a 2009 Ford F-150 pickup and a Yamaha Rhino four-wheeler, Hughes will serve as grand marshall of Sunday's Dickies 500, getting things started with the traditional "Gentlemen, start your engines" command.
He also chose a car number in a blind draw on Saturday, picking the No. 24 of pole winner Jeff Gordon. Hughes wins $1 million if Gordon wins Sunday's race.
Texas and Homestead are the only current Cup tracks at which Gordon hasn't won, but Hughes wasn't worried.
"I kind of like my choice," he said. "He's never won here, so he's due."
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SPARK PLUGS: Two-time Cup champion Tony Stewart will drive a backup Toyota in Sunday's race after his primary car was badly damaged when his right rear tire exploded during Saturday's opening practice. ... Greg Biffle, third in the Cup points, led the first of the two practice sessions Saturday, while series runner-up Carl Edwards was fastest in the "Happy Hour" practice. Series leader Jimmie Johnson, who will start seventh in the race, was 12th fastest in the final session.
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