12 Questions with Sam Hornish Jr.

Jeff Gluck | USA TODAY Sports

Our series of weekly NASCAR driver interviews continues with Sam Hornish Jr., the IndyCar champ-turned-NASCAR driver who won the Indianapolis 500 in 2006. Hornish, currently 27th in the Sprint Cup Series standings, will race Richard Petty Motorsports' No. 9 car in Sunday's Coca-Cola 600.

Q: If NASCAR allowed you to listen to music while you were racing, would you want to?

A: I think a little background music wouldn't hurt. With the amount of cars we've got out there and having to hear all the spotters, there's times when you wouldn't mind hearing a little bit in the background.

But that'd probably be mostly for practice. Once you get out there racing, it'd be too distracting. And if I don't have control of the radio, I probably wouldn't like it either.

Would you want relaxing music or music that pumps you up?

I don't think it would be too much of anything that would fire you up. We're not listening to any speed metal or anything like that.

But when we go test at times, you'll be driving and a song will come into your mind. Like if they had something playing on the radio (in the garage) while they're making changes to the cars, it gets stuck in your head. Sometimes that's a bad thing.

Q: Where did your first paycheck come from?

A: It probably came from washing semi-trucks for my parents shortly after I started racing. I would go do that for a couple hours after school and have a little bit of money but also have some responsibility.

It was kind of fun. When you're younger, it's kind of exciting to be washing a car. But I got over that in a hurry. Washing trucks, especially in the wintertime in Ohio with all the snow and salt and everything that comes in, it's kind of a wet, cold job.

How old were you when you were doing that?

Probably from when I was about 12 to when I was 16. Then after I turned 16, I got to go work in the fab shop and I got out of having to wash trucks all the time.

Q: Who is an autograph you got as a kid that seemed to be a big deal to you at the time?

A: I had a lot of autographs from different drivers. It seemed like you couldn't get close to the drivers because kids weren't allowed in those areas most of the time. But the one I was probably most excited about – and my mom ended up getting it for me – was Danny Sullivan. I was a fan of his and the whole spin-and-win at Indy (in the 1985 Indy 500).

Q: Where's a place you've never been that you'd like to go visit?

A: The place I've kind of got on my list is Yosemite. I love being outdoors and I've done a little research here and there about some of the people that spent time in the national parks – especially John Muir trying to get the government to section off these areas as national parks. That's interesting to me.

I have this crazy dream that I'd like to do the Appalachian Trail at some point as well. But deciding you're going to walk 2,000 miles and actually making it happen is a lot different than it just coming into your mind. You'd have to get the four months it would take to actually do it.

Q: Do people ever accuse you of being addicted to your phone?

A: Not really, because the people in my family – my wife and the two of my kids who can use a phone at this point in time – they all usually have my phone. Somebody else has it, so it's kind of hard for me to be addicted to it.

I've been told before I'm addicted to eBay, but not my phone.

What do you buy off eBay?

It all depends. Everything from model cars to trucks. The bad thing about eBay is you end up finding a bunch of stuff you didn't even know you were looking for because it's under "related."

I try not to buy too much stuff off there. But I've bought kind of "mantique" stuff. For my 30th birthday, I bought myself a 1918 Excelsior racing motorcycle. It's like a barn-find type of thing and it's the centerpiece of my man cave with my 1901 barber chair. I like to get stuff like that; some of it is to hold onto, some of it is to try and restore.

Like my barber chair when I got it, it had four or five coats of white paint on not only the metal, but all the wood and everything. So I got to work on scraping all that out. And I'm pretty sure I got some lead paint in my eye.

That can't be good.

Eh. I lived through it.

Q: If a genie promised you a championship in exchange for never being able to do your favorite hobby again, would you accept that offer?

A: I'd probably find another hobby. By winning a championship, it usually means you've won some races along the way and it'd be really good to have that opportunity.

Racing is beyond a hobby. At one point in time it was. If they told me I couldn't drive anymore, I'd have to go against that. But all my other hobbies are pretty much interchangeable; I like motorcycles, but maybe I'd just get a scooter. (Laughs)

Q: What's your preferred method of dealing with an angry driver after a race?

A: It all depends like if I feel like I did anything wrong. If I feel like I made a mistake, I'll tell them I made a mistake. If I don't feel like I made a mistake, I'll tell them why.

I know that sooner or later, in order to win these races and to win a fair amount of them, you're going to have some confrontations and some dust-ups to be that aggressive. But I'd rather not have to have too many of those. I'd rather try to win races in the right way, where I'm not going to take advantage of somebody. We'll have to see what happens. (Laughs)

Q: Do you ever get mistaken for another driver or celebrity?

A: Yeah, I get mistaken for a lot of drivers. Paul Menard and Aric (Almirola), I generally get that the most. Last year, when I was running the Monster car, people would sometimes call me Kyle (Busch).

But I've found the best thing for making sure that doesn't happen is continuing to do the media stuff I do. Because when people see me more, all that goes away when they see your face. As a driver, you'd think seeing your face and knowing who your sponsors are would keep that from happening.

It really didn't happen at all in IndyCar. And then when I switched to NASCAR, I started getting a lot of people calling me other drivers' names. When I started doing Speed Center and things like that (as an analyst), people started knowing who I was again. So getting that interview time is definitely very important to the fan base.

The funny thing I always think about is if somebody is calling me somebody else's name, that other person is probably getting called my name at some point in time.

Q: If you had a time machine and you could travel to any year and race, where would you go?

A: I think a great timeframe would be 1985 to 1995 – in any form of racing, whether it be Formula One, IndyCar, NASCAR. You even look at what the endurance racing was like with the Porsche cars and stuff like that. There was a lot of innovation that was happening, there was lots of competition.

And it was to the point where safety had started to become a factor. Like I think it would be super cool to go race at Indianapolis in the 1950s with the roadsters, but you hit the wall and they get a new driver and clean the car up, you know? It was just a different way.

So I just think that ('85 to '95) era would be cool, but maybe I'm just so interested in that because those were my formative years. That's when I got an understanding of what racing was. I was 6 to 16 years old and I had all this wonder and was just learning about everything. When I was a kid out there on my bicycle with the cones set up and just doing laps and pretending to call the races, I was racing in my mind against all those drivers.

Q: Would you rather have the ability to fly or be invisible?

A: If you could fly, I don't really see what the point of being invisible is. Because if you don't want to be seen or be around anyone, you could just fly somewhere. It's not like they could all follow you. I think being invisible would be kind of tough, too – there's not a whole lot of good that comes out of hiding, I guess. (Laughs)

Q: I've been asking each person to give me a question for the next interview. The last interview was with Brennan Poole, and his question was: Is there any area of racing you feel like you need to improve on?

A: I wouldn't say it's any one area. To be really specific about it, I'd say there are some confidence things I'd do. Like at Kansas, I was feeling pretty confident and went to pass Denny (Hamlin) around the outside and then he got pushed up into me (in a four-wide situation). Then after that, I'm like, "Man, who is at fault there? I thought I gave him plenty of room." And I did, but he got pushed up.

But then on the next restart, I'm like, "Alright, I'm going to tone it back a little bit because I don't want to have two people mad at me." And then I made a mistake on the restart and didn't get going and went from 11th to 23rd and had to work for the next 70 laps to try and get back up there.

So the more I can have cars like I had at Kansas and the more the consistency goes up, then I won't be worried about, "OK, was I too aggressive there?" Because when you really sit back and look at the race, there are so many guys out there who are being way more aggressive than I am; sometimes it works for them and sometimes it doesn't.

I felt like that's what always worked for me really well in IndyCar – I had that confidence to put my car here and it was going to work out. If something happened, it was usually because someone didn't see me or someone's spotter didn't tell them where I was. And then in the first couple years of being over here (in NASCAR), it took awhile to build that back up, and it's still something I continue to work on.

I feel like all the pieces of the puzzle are there as far as the abilities go, but if you don't have the confidence to push the limits of what those are, you end up making mistakes because you're trying not to make mistakes. If you try to focus on not making mistakes, you're going to have one because you're not thinking about forward progress, I guess.

Q: And do you have a question I can ask the next driver?

A: I'd like to know: What's the most fun you've had in racing? What form of racing was the most fun for you? I always feel like whatever a driver started doing in racing, that's what they had the most fun doing because they were doing it just because they loved to do it. They never thought about making any money.

Q: Finally, how did this interview go on a scale of 1-10?

A: (Laughs) I would say a 7 until I got asked about what I needed to work on as a driver, and then I felt like I went downhill and maybe revealed too much.

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