GEARING UP

What’s new in motor sports heading into this weekend:

1) Three-time IndyCar Series champion Sam Hornish Jr. is expected to announce this weekend that he will move to the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series next year for team owner Roger Penske, whose current Cup drivers are Kurt Busch and Ryan Newman.

Hornish will join reigning IndyCar Series champ Dario Franchitti, former Indianapolis 500 winner Juan Pablo Montoya and other open-wheel drivers who are making the switch to stock car racing.

Hornish, 28, already has driven in some NASCAR Busch Series races and has tried unsuccessfully to qualify for several Cup races. He and Franchitti will make qualifying runs for the Busch race Saturday at Phoenix International Raceway, and Hornish also will attempt to qualify for the Cup race there Sunday.

2) The Champ Car World Series ends its season Sunday in Mexico City with rookie Graham Rahal still looking for his first victory.

Rahal, the 18-year-old son of former Indianapolis 500 winner and IndyCar Series team owner Bobby Rahal, has four “podiums,” or top-three finishes, this year.

Sebastien Bourdais, his teammate at Newman-Haas-Lanigan Racing, already has clinched his fourth consecutive Champ Car title.

3) The flurry of drivers changing teams for 2008 continues to hurt the market for die-cast cars, clothing and other driver-related merchandise.

Speedway Motorsports Inc., a track operator that also owns half of Motorsports Authentics, one of the leading sellers of such goods, reported an $18-million loss from its portion of the merchandise business for the quarter ended Sept. 30.

The company blamed the loss mostly on “the unprecedented number” of NASCAR driver changes announced this year.

4) Stock car legend Richard Petty plans to move his team’s headquarters from its longtime home in Level Cross, N.C., to Mooresville, N.C., near Charlotte, where most of NASCAR’s Nextel Cup teams are based.

Petty Enterprises has been in Level Cross since it was founded by Richard’s father, Lee, in 1949 shortly after NASCAR was organized as a sanctioning body.

5) In local racing Saturday night, Perris Auto Speedway plans a multi-race program and Ventura Raceway’s lineup is led by sprint-car racing.

STAT OF THE WEEK

* Rusty Wallace, above, holds the record for most laps led, 868, in NASCAR Nextel Cup racing at Phoenix International Raceway, the site of Sunday’s race.

LIFE IN THE FAST LANE

Helio Castroneves, two-time Indianapolis 500 winner,

now into his seventh week competing on TV’s

“Dancing With the Stars”:

‘My knees are really feeling it.’