Hornish: top five was possible

Hornish, who was making only his third-ever race in the Sprint Cup Series, ran among the top five in the first half of the race, but the changing track conditions into the night and a bad pit stop dropped him down the leaderboard in the second part of the race.

The former IRL IndyCar Series and Indy 500 champion believes had the race been run earlier than it did, his chances of a better result would've been higher as his car performed at its best when the track conditions were warmer before dusk.

"We actually wished the race would have started a little bit earlier - we actually thought we would have had a better chance at a top five finish at the end of the day," Hornish said. "I thought that during the sections of the race when it was real hot was when we were doing our very best.

"So I was really happy with where we started off with the car and what I thought we needed on the car to be good - at least at the beginning to work our way from the middle of the pack to get up to the front."

The Penske driver looks forward to continue his steep learning curve this weekend at Fontana, where he raced a year ago in the Nationwide series finishing 35th. He says the points swap with Kurt Busch, which takes away the need to be quick in qualifying for him, will allow him to work more on his race set-up during practice.

"I haven't had a lot of experience there (California Speedway) in these cars, but I got to run the Busch race at California last year," Hornish added. "Although we didn't finish where we wanted to, we were running pretty well from the start. One of the things that I'm really going to try and do is work on the race set-up.

"I feel like we're in a pretty good position just to try and learn as much as we can about the car during the first couple of sessions and just try to make ourselves better by doing that."

Hornish also spoke about the possible merger deal between the IRL and Champ Car. Although he hopes it finally happens, he claims that not even a unified single-seater series would change his decision of leaving open-wheel racing to go to NASCAR.

"I made this decision and even if it would have come through last year that they would have been back together, I still would have made the same decision I made and come over here and run (in NASCAR)," he said.

"They've been really close before and it hasn't happened. I think now - financially with the way things are going - it's a lot closer to happening."