[media-credit id=13 align=”alignright” width=”225″][/media-credit]Sam Hornish Jr. knows what winning can do for a career but when it ended up sealing the deal for him to run a full Nationwide Series schedule in 2012 he understood and appreciated it that much more.

“It sure made everything a lot better, but at the end of the day it helped us in a lot of things,” said Hornish about his Phoenix win last November. “We were really close to being able to sign our deal to be able to run full-time. We were trying to figure out which sponsors were going to do how many races and then, when we won, we had more races sold than we had races.”

Hornish went to victory lane in Phoenix while competing in a limited schedule for Penske Racing while hoping to put together plans for 2012. At the time the whole season hadn’t been sold to sponsors and he was in jeopardy of again not running a full season, something he hasn’t been accustomed to during his career.

Then came Phoenix where Hornish has found magic before. Following the win sponsorship from Alliance Truck Parts and new partner WURTH has the Chad Walter led team ready to chase a championship.

Hornish said the win also helped solidify everything the team had worked hard for. Also setting up a great opportunity ahead for them even though they would rather had just started the season the day after Homestead. It was hard sitting home for three months and not put to good use the momentum that had been built.

In only 13 starts in 2011 Hornish compiled six top 10s, two top fives and his one win. It was Hornish’s 32^nd career start, he started fifth and then led 62 laps and held off teammate and Sprint Cup stars Brad Keselowski and Carl Edwards. And while Hornish wants to keep his expectations for the upcoming season in check, there’s no denying the excitement for it.

“I’m really excited about it,” he said last week in Daytona. “I feel like we’ve got a great opportunity with our Alliance Truck Parts and WURTH Group Dodge Challenger. I just feel like we’ve got a lot of things that we are capable of doing if we are smart and get some good finishes to start off the year, build up our point base. We want to run for the championship and we need to continue to work well with our teammates and try to learn as much as we can to have both of the Penske Dodge Challengers running up front.”

Cautiously optimistic says Hornish. Starting off the season on the right foot will be key toward heading in the right direction. Be smart, work hard and most importantly work together as a team. Drivers and teams always mark the first five races as a starting point and baseline of their program.

Where do we stand after leaving California and how do we stack up against the competition? Evaluations will be made of what the team is doing right and wrong as they move toward trying to put themselves in championship contention. But Hornish knows it will be a tall task.

“Well, I sure hope it’s easier for us than some other people,” he said. “I look at Ricky [Stenhouse Jr.] who returns as the champion and Austin Dillon coming in as the truck series champion. There’s a lot of guys who are going to be strong, a lot of well-funded cars, because it’s one thing to have the drivers and the car counts there, but to have the driver and a well-funded car running every weekend for the championship, there’s some good teams out there.”