FORT WORTH, Texas, Sept. 13 (UPI) -- Sam Hornish, who enters Sunday's season-ending Chevy 500 with a 12-point lead over Helio Castroneves for the Indy Racing League championship, immediately experienced misfortune just 15 minutes into Friday's opening practice session at Texas Motor Speedway.
An airbrake in the fuel line, which is designed to keep fuel from spilling out of the lines during a crash, stuck open while Hornish was taking practice laps in his Dallara/Chevrolet.
The fuel spilled onto the Chevrolet engine, where it ignited, causing damage to the wiring harness in the engine. The defending IRL champion was not injured, but the crew had to spend most of the afternoon preparing the backup car for Saturday's qualification session.
"We had a connector that broke and caught the car on fire," Hornish said. "The second car, we hadn't run yet. So we're going to go over and make some changes to the T car because it didn't have the engine in it that we wanted to go out and burn up some tires. We knew we weren't going to learn anything."
The engine in Hornish's Dallara was the same one he drove to the pole last Saturday at Chicagoland Speedway. The team installed a fresh engine in the backup car between sessions. It was the engine that was built for Sunday's race and was going to be installed in the primary car after practice and qualifying.
Rather than let Friday the 13th get worse, Hornish was able to rebound and get his backup car up to the 11th-fastest speed in the two sessions with a lap at 219.675 miles per hour around the 1 1/2-mile oval.
"The Pennzoil Panther crew is pretty resilient like that," Hornish said. "They go out and do whatever it takes to make the car fast. We have a little bit of work to do. We're pretty much a practice session behind right now, but we know what we need to do for qualifying so we're not worried about that.
"We're just going to go out and figure out what we need to do to make it work real well in traffic because we know that's what we're going to be facing all day Sunday. We're making sure the car will work high or low just like it did at Chicago last week."
Hornish won the closest event in auto racing history when he defeated Al Unser Jr. by .0024 seconds last week in Chicago. That allowed Hornish to jump from eight points behind Castroneves to 12 points ahead with one race left.
The 23-year-old driver from Defiance, Ohio ran with Castroneves in Friday's final practice session to measure the competition.
"We were trying to figure out what the car was going to do," Hornish said. "Every time I tried to get away from him, there he was again. That'll probably be pretty much how it is on race day."
Rookie Vitor Meira of Brazil was the fastest driver Friday's with a lap at 221.457 mph in a Dallara/Chevrolet in the first session.
