We have now passed the quarter pole of another NASCAR season, and all Sam Hornish Jr. and Dario Franchitti have to show for their efforts so far are beaucoups headaches (from sucking exhaust fumes), one broken ankle and those cute little yellow stripes on their rear bumpers that designate them as rookies on the circuit.

But there are rookies, and then there are rookies.

Tony Stewart had four wins and wound up third in the standings his first year on the tour. Kyle Busch and Dale Earnhardt Jr. knocked down two wins apiece. Jimmie Johnson won three times and was fifth in points. Kevin Harvick debuted with two wins and a ninth-place finish. Jeff Gordon was a poised-for-greatness 14th.

Hornish and Franchitti don't measure up by those standards. Hornish is 33rd in Sprint Cup points, Franchitti 38th. They've combined for one lap led (by Franchitti) and that broken ankle (Franchitti again). Hornish finished a pat-on-the-back 15th in the season-opener at Daytona and hasn't been above 20th since. Franchitti has cracked the top 30 once.

Consider them humbled.

"I think it's been a little more difficult than expected," said Franchitti, mending from his wreck last Saturday at Talladega and on the DL this week. "Although I didn't think it'd be easy. You're driving against the best people in the business."

Said Hornish, "I want to go out there and win, but that's not realistic right now."

Understand, we're not talking racing novitiates. Franchitti turns 35 in two weeks. Hornish will be 29 in July. Both have open-wheel bona fides. Franchitti was last year's Indy 500 and IRL champ. Hornish is a past Indy winner and three-time IRL kingpin. So they know their way around an oval. They just haven't translated their skill-set into much of an imprint in NASCAR's major league.

A few off-the-cuff impressions here: One, NASCAR is a giant step up in class from IRL. Two, Tony Stewart is really, really good. And three, there's something to be said for incremental steps -- especially when the learning curve is more steep than Bristol's 36-degree banking.

Not to diss Hornish's and Franchitti's IRL accomplishments, but they snared those titles in a diminished series marked by scrawnier fields and a skimpier schedule when compared to NASCAR. Stewart -- the '97 IRL titlist -- faced similar adjustments. He just happens to be among the most gifted drivers of his generation.

That said, even Stewart -- not to mention fellow open-wheeler Gordon before him and the likes of Kasey Kahne and Casey Mears since then -- apprenticed on the Busch/Nationwide tour before moving up to the bigs. NASCAR's autos are twice as heavy and lack the downforce of Indy-type cars. They're a load, in other words. But Hornish and Franchitti were fast-forwarded on the basis of pedigree, not preparation. And it shows.

"Oh, yeah, I knew it was going to be tough," Hornish said. "The way I looked at it is if it's not going to be challenging and not going to be difficult, why would you want to do it?"

Well, money for one thing. And resources. And money. Hornish already has collected $1.3 million in winnings -- he's 33rd, remember? -- which is as much as he took in last year for finishing fifth in IRL. Franchitti earned $4 million last season in IRL, except all but $1.4 million was covered by the champion's bonus and winning Indy. He's at $780,000 to date in NASCAR -- about $400,000 less than Danica Patrick bagged in all of 2007 as eighth in the IRL standings.

So our intrepid open-wheel expatriates are eating well.

They're just not asphalting well -- and they might need to pick up the pace.

"It has been difficult this year," Hornish said. "In a world where everyone wants instant gratification, you wonder if you'll get the time."

"We didn't come here expecting it to be easy," Franchitti observed.

Good thing.