Roush likes his chances at Indy

INDIANAPOLIS – Jack Roush can hardly wait until Sunday.

Heading into the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, the owner of Roush Racing’s five-car Nextel Cup juggernaut likes his chances of winning the event he considers second only to the Daytona 500 in prestige.

“I would think the odds of our winning at Indy are bigger than they were at Pocono, and we won both races at Pocono,” Roush said Friday.

Those victories, by Carl Edwards and Kurt Busch, were Roush’s first at the track in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. They gave the elite team, winner of the last two series championships, nine victories in 20 races this season – more than any other team.

Now, reigning Cup champion Busch, Edwards, Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth and longtime Roush star Mark Martin have the opportunity to give the boss another team first with a victory at the famed Brickyard.

It would be another coup for Roush, who waited 16 years for his first Cup title and has gone 11 years without winning at Indy.

“The race in front of you always looks the biggest, and it needs to be,” Roush said. “But, when you stand back from it, you realize this is the second-biggest event of the year, after Daytona. Everything after Indy pales in comparison.

“A win here would be huge for us. This place is all about history. You can’t step through those hallowed gates without feeling a sense of history and the names that have won here. There’s a real presence when you get here.”

It turned into a lost day for the Roush team and the rest of the Cup competitors when rain washed out both scheduled practices. The revised schedule for today has the teams practicing for two hours in the morning, with qualifying moved from 10 a.m. to 3:10 p.m.