Bump Day arrived for Dario Franchitti and Sam Hornish, Jr. at Bristol Motor Speedway Sunday. Both Indy 500 winners completed their first race at NASCAR’s “Thriller Dome” and were simply glad to have it over.
Franchitti was involved in two crashes and finished 38th.
“What an exciting facility and terrific place to race,” Franchitti said. “It was a tough day for our Dodge Charger. We lost our brakes before lap 100, and we pretty much just had to stay out of the way all day. We had a similar problem this morning, but I think the crew has found the problem — but it’s still pretty frustrating.
“Bristol is pretty tough to run with no brakes.” 
The finish left Franchitti 38th in the points following the fifth race of the season, which means he is out of the top 35 and will have to qualify his way into the starting field through time trials beginning at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway in two weeks.
Hornish entered Sunday’s contest 36th in points, but his 29th-place finish moved him to 35th in points, so he is still guaranteed a starting position when the series resumes after a one-week break for Easter.
“We could have done without the caution with just under 10 laps to go,” Hornish said. “We took a pit stop and it cost us a couple of positions. That’s just racing. The car wasn’t real good today — we never made any adjustments that made the car go in the right direction. The guys did a great job in the pits. 
“A little bit of that is me telling Chris (Carrier, crew chief) what to do and helping us get the car in the right direction. When Kurt (Busch) and Ryan (Newman) don’t have a good car, they do a good job communicating what adjustments need to be made. I’m still learning that stuff...  so I’ll put some of that blame on my shoulders.”
Despite the meager finish, the three-time IndyCar champion and ’06 Indy 500 winner will gladly take it and move on assured that he will be in the starting lineup at Martinsville.
“We came here to put ourselves in a position to be in the top 35 in driver’s points — and we did that today,” Hornish said. “It was what I thought it would be, except I probably got bumped a little bit more than I bumped anybody else just because we weren’t as quick as we’d like to be... It was a tough day for us, but we finished and I think we’re in the top 35 in points, so it makes us feel a little bit better about going into Martinsville.”
Whether Hornish had made the top 35 or not, he remained confident that he could go into Martinsville and still post a speed that would get him into the race.
“We’ve qualified well enough to get in based on speed each time that we’ve gone with the exception of California and our points would have been good enough to get us in,” Hornish said. “It’s nice knowing that when (Dale) Jarrett leaves that will change the points. At Martinsville, we were close to getting in the race but bumped by the champion’s provisional. We ran two-tenths quicker on our warm-up lap than either of our qualifying laps, so we could have made it in the race pretty easily. I look forward to going back to Martinsville.
“We just need to keep moving forward.”
Hornish and Penske Racing used last season as a way to gain experience before making the full-time move to Cup. That is a different approach than Franchitti took.
Franchitti won the Indianapolis 500 and IndyCar Series title last year before leaving to join Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates in Cup.
“Dario has less experience at this than I have,” Hornish said. “I’m sure he is thinking about it, too. It’s not an easy feeling knowing you aren’t in the top 35, and you want to be. We’ve had some bad luck issues that have kept us from even being in the top 25 in points.
“We feel like we’ve got it; we just have to stop having bad luck affect us.”