Daytona 500 Packed With Indy 500 Winners

Feb. 7, 2008 — -- Since NASCAR's early days, stars of open-wheel racing have occasionally stopped by to visit.

Things have changed. Now they're coming to stay.

The 2008 Daytona 500 will have at least three Indy 500 winners on the starting grid -- Juan Pablo Montoya, Sam Hornish Jr. and Dario Franchitti. Jacques Villeneuve will make it a historic foursome if he qualifies.

Having Indy 500 winners at Daytona is nothing new. Even 45 years ago, four men who would win Indy competed in the Daytona 500 -- A.J. Foyt, Johnny Rutherford, Troy Ruttman and Parnelli Jones. But two of them -- Jones and Rutherford -- hadn't accomplished the feat at the time.

The 1981 race was the last time two men with Indy 500 wins on their résumés -- Rutherford and Foyt -- competed in the Daytona 500.

In the past, the big names of Indy were just passing through, racing in NASCAR's biggest show as a little sidelight before heading back to the open cockpit.

And for the most part, they were Americans who sounded the same (well, sort of) and didn't have hard-to-pronounce names. They just happened to spend most of their racing careers in a different discipline.

They could make more money and gain more fame by concentrating on Indy cars. Frankly, the idea of racing full time in NASCAR was laughable.

Who's laughing now? Indy-car racing did everything possible to destroy itself over the past decade with two competing leagues and constant feuding.

The open-wheelers are here now because it's the place to be. The men who won the past two Indy 500s -- Hornish and Franchitti -- will race full time in Sprint Cup. Neither will race in the 2008 Indy 500.

Montoya coming to Sprint Cup last year was just the beginning. Montoya is a Formula One winner, but Villeneuve is a Formula One champion (1997). Villeneuve and Patrick Carpentier are Canadians who plan to race full time in Cup this season.

Cup will have four foreign-born drivers competing for the first time. Montoya is Colombian and Franchitti is a Scotsman.