Hornish

KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- Sam Hornish Jr. has become an auto racing star by displaying a steely nerve and a coolness under fire.

But after getting passed on a confusing restart late in Sunday's Ameristar Casino Indy 200, the 23-year-old driver Indy Racing League driver from Defiance, Ohio, was hot, not only from the high heat and humidity, but the way the end of the race was handled.

"It was very hot," Hornish said. "I feel like we should be in first place, but things don't always work out the way they should."

Hornish contends that when the race was supposed to be restarted on lap 196 and the IRL officials left the yellow flag out to get the lapped car of George Mack out of the way, it gave eventual winner Airton Dare an advantage.

Then, when the green flag did wave on lap 197, Hornish did not anticipate the restart and Dare got a big run on the defending IRL champion, concluding with the race-winning pass in the third turn on lap 198.

"The first race restart that I saw, the second and third cars in line, which were two lapped cars, did not go," Hornish said. "So they thought the fair thing would be do move one of them and put one of them behind the 12 car. I don't know exactly what happened, but when I looked in my mirror I see two cars side by side.

"On the restart, it's not a dual-file restart. We're not running NASCAR. I don't want to point fingers at anybody, I don't want to be mad at anybody, but to come all that way and run that race, of course I'm hot and a little bit mad about things right now. But it's a long day. To have a car that was running that good, to end it that way and to get beat like that, it's no fun."

Hornish said on the final restart, he still had his car in third gear, and that allowed Dare to make a run at the leader.

"I didn't know what was going on," Hornish said. "I had to go back down to second and try to go. You're a sitting duck at that point, especially when the other guy is side by side with your lapped car that's in the middle, and I know that if there's not going to be any; if they want to let that happen, then you might as well just move the lapped cars to the back of the field. That's not really fair to them, either."

Hornish was admittedly disappointed, but he said he will try to quickly forget about the race that got away and move on to the next event, the Firestone Indy 200 at Nashville Superspeedway on July 20.

"It's nothing I won't get over by the next race," Hornish said. "Just not to win, that's why we come out here, that's why we run. The only car that we could not touch all day was (Tomas) Scheckter, and when he went out, I thought for sure that was ours.

"It was hot all day long. The car, when you started sweating from the time you put your helmet on, and, you know, 15, 20 minutes or so, a little bit more, so I'll start feeling a little bit better about it. I need to talk to Brian (Barnhart) about it and see what he has to say. I just feel bad for the team. The Pennzoil Panther guys, they did an awesome job today, got me in and out of the pits today. We had a good car, a fast car. I'm just trying to figure out a way to cool off, mentally and physically."

Team owner John Barnes met with IRL vice president of operations and chief steward Brian Barnhart after the race to voice his side of the story.

"We stood corrected -- we finished second," Barnes said. "George Mack as he was going into Turn 3, called his spotter and said he wanted to go to the back of the pack. He checked everybody up in the middle of Turn 3 and 4 so they aborted that start, moved him back in the pack and restarted from there.

"I was disappointed that we weren't told it was going to go green the next time by. We should have been prepared any way. We thought we had a decent start, he got a run on us and got by us."

Barnhart said on the original restart that was aborted, after Mack tried to get out of the way, it blocked the cars behind him. So Barnhart left the yellow flag out for one more lap. Barnhart wanted to place the lapped car of Raul Boesel back in position ahead of Dare, who was racing for the win.

"We had a non-start at Richmond and we went the following lap as well, and that is on a three-quarter mile track," Barnhart said. "We always go the next time by if the order is correct. Sam was the first car at the green and that is way we went.

"Panther thought we went green with Dare behind Hornish, but when I told them the 12 (Boesel) had moved back around the 14 (Dare), they were OK with that."

Hornish did gain ground on third-place finisher Helio Castroneves and fifth-place finisher Gil de Ferran in the battle for the IRL championship. He entered the race in third place, 24 points behind Castroneves.

Hornish remains in third, but is now 19 points behind Castroneves and 11 behind de Ferran.