Finally driving toward a win?

New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner has won six World Series titles in 32 years.

He has been in the horse racing business even longer and still hasn’t won a Kentucky Derby.

But that might change this year as Bellamy Road has emerged as the horse to beat in the May 7 “Run for the Roses.”

“Baseball is a lot easier,” Steinbrenner says. “Winning the Kentucky Derby would be equal to – but not better than – winning the World Series.”

Steinbrenner’s approach in the thoroughbred game is different from his baseball methods. In rebuilding the Yankees after he took over in 1973, he acquired the best players money can buy.

“Spending some money and getting some great players turned it around,” Steinbrenner said. “We didn’t put the money in our pockets; we put it back in the team.”

In racing, Steinbrenner doesn’t try to compete with the oil-rich sheiks, the Japanese tycoons and the American super-rich who spend fortunes at the yearling sales at Keeneland.

He depends on his farm system.

Steinbrenner admitted he “knew nothing about breeding” when he bought Kinsman Farm in Ocala, Fla.

“My involvement with horses pre-dates my ownership of the Yankees,” said Steinbrenner, who’ll turn 75 on the Fourth of July. “Big Whippendeal was my first good horse.”

Big Whippendeal, a 3-year-old gelded son of a mare he bought for $1,900 and bred at his farm, won the 1973 Illinois Derby at Sportsman’s Park, Steinbrenner’s first major victory in racing.

“My dad taught me to be a competitor,” Steinbrenner said. “I had the same kind of aspirations when I got into racing as I did when I bought the Yankees.”

Bellamy Road made his first start of the year – the third race of his career and his debut for trainer Nick Zito – on March 12 at Gulfstream Park and he overcame a bump at the start to win by 15 3/4 lengths. Zito chose the April 12 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct for the colt’s next start and his final Kentucky Derby prep. The strapping brown colt outdid himself: He won by 17 1/2 lengths and his 1 1/8 -mile time of 1:47.16 equaled the track record set in 1973 by Riva Ridge.

“You go by how fast a horse runs and who he is running against,” said Steinbrenner, who has watched Bellamy Road’s races on TV but hasn’t seen a live performance. “There was nobody pushing him and he tied the track record of Riva Ridge, who was a great horse.”

Steinbrenner has made the Kentucky Derby before. He finished fifth with Steve’s Friend in 1977, ninth with Diligence in 1996, ninth with Concerto in 1997 and 11th with Blue Burner in 2002. He also had a 37 1/2 percent interest in Eternal Prince, the 12th-place finisher in 1985.

There is one baseball owner who has succeeded in this World Series-Kentucky Derby daily double: John Galbreath, who owned the Pittsburgh Pirates and Darby Dan Farm.

“I used to kid the late John Galbreath all the time. I said: `You won the world championship twice (in 1960 and 1979) and you won the Derby twice (with Chateaugay in 1963 and Proud Clarion in 1967), so you’re still up on me,’ ” Steinbrenner said.

For the farm’s success so far, Steinbrenner credits his son, Hank.

“Racing is a family thing and Hank makes all the breeding decisions,” Steinbrenner said. “He has made it a religion ever since he got out of Culver Military Academy. He uses his knowledge of equine genetics to create the horse who can create the horse who can compete against the ones owned by the big spenders.”

Hank Steinbrenner wasn’t the breeder of Bellamy Road, but he was the breeder of the colt’s sire, Concerto, who has been standing at the Ocala Stud Farm near Steinbrenner’s 850-acre Kinsman Farm since retiring from racing. Concerto went into the 1997 Derby with seven victories in 10 starts at six different tracks and had never been worse than third until he finished ninth that afternoon in the most important race of his career.

As a stud still owned by Kinsman Farm, Concerto has been moderately successful since his first foal crop hit the racetrack in 2000. His stud fee for 2005 was a bargain basement $3,500. Going into this year, eight of his 106 named foals were stakes winner but none had won major races.

A small Florida breeder, Dianne Cotter, made the match that produced Bellamy Road, sending Hurry Home Hillary, an undistinguished daughter of 1983 Preakness winner Deputed Testamony, to Concerto.

Last April at the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Company’s 2-year-olds-in-training sale, Steinbrenner bought the colt for $87,000, an affordable price for a promising unraced horse.

He made the purchase at the urging of his farm manager, Edward Sexton, a 36-year-old Irishman who had taken the job in January, 2004 after working at Ocala Stud.

“He’s a great farm trainer and a great evaluator of horses,” Steinbrenner said. “He was an exercise rider at Ocala Stud and he had watched Bellamy Road when he was growing up.”

During the years, Steinbrenner has gone through thoroughbred trainers the way he has gone through baseball managers. But after he gives them his horses, he takes a hands-off approach and he has fired only a few. When Sexton agreed that Zito would be the ideal trainer to prepare Bellamy Road for the Kentucky Derby, the colt was taken from trainer Michael Dickinson’s farm.

“Nick has had horses for me over the years,” explained Steinbrenner. “Everybody in our family likes Nick. My son and granddaughter steered me back to Nick. Michael Dickinson does not know what Nick knows about the Derby.”

Zito’s reputation as a “Derby trainer” is underscored by the contingent he will send to this year’s race. He has four other promising colts for four other owners – including High Fly and Noble Causeway, 1-2 finishers in the Florida Derby.

Steinbrenner knows only too well how competitive this Derby figures to be. After Bellamy Road’s victory in the Wood, in acknowledging a congratulatory note from his friend Billy Johnston, he wrote: “You think I don’t need any help. How about some divine intervention?”

Johnston heads the hierarchy at Balmoral Park and Maywood Park. He and Steinbrenner put together the deal to buy Balmoral from Edward DeBartolo for $8 million in 1987. Although Steinbrenner’s family joined with the Johnston family in taking financial control of the Crete harness track and later its sister track, Maywood Park, the Yankees’ owner isn’t involved in either the ownership or operation of either facility.

“It has been a great partnership our family has had with the Johnston family,” said Steinbrenner. “Billy’s sons, Johnny and Duke, are doing a great job running those tracks.”

In the years since their families became partners in the Chicago racetracks, Billy Johnston and his wife, Jane, have been Steinbrenner’s guests whenever the Yankees have played in the World Series.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody as intense and as hard-working,” Johnston said. “The day after the World Series he doesn’t go on vacation; he starts working on next year.

“Having this horse right now has helped him get over the Yankees loss to the Red Sox last fall (in the American League Championship Series) and the slump they’ve been in at the start of this season.

“Winning is everything to him, but he realizes the Kentucky Derby is different than the World Series. If Derek Jeter flubs a grounder and doesn’t get the guy out at first that doesn’t mean the guy will score a run and if he does score that doesn’t necessarily mean the Yankees will lose. In the Kentucky Derby, you’ve got one chance and it’s over in two minutes. All a horse has to do is stumble coming out of the gate, get shut off or have the jockey have to snatch hold for a second and it’s the difference between winning and losing.”