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Jay, the IROC series in the 1970's was much different than today's IROC. They actually raced in sports cars and at least half of the races were on road courses. NASCAR drivers statistically averaged a better finish than F1 drivers during these years. Remember too that F1 drivers were no strangers to the sports car scene as many of them raced in various sports car races on their free weekends and quite of few of them raced in Can-Am like Denny Hulme did. Hulme had raced in a Porshe at Riverside before in Can Am and also was the winningest driver in Can Am's history with 22 victories.
As far as Tony Stewart embarrassing himself like Zanardi did in F1, lets be realistic. Tony Stewart is a talent that has proved himself quickly in a variety of different types of cars: sprint cars, IndyCars, and stock cars. Give him a year of testing and he would be challenging for the WDC in his second season in a competitive ride. BTW, Zanardi sure did embarrass himself in IROC finishing dead last in the series in 1998. Alex is talented but his talent is more limited than Stewart's.
I generally feel that the talent required in NASCAR Winston Cup would transfer quite well to a high downforce open wheel car with grooved tires. All that would be left then is adjusting to the steady diet of road circuits which someone like Stewart, Gordon and Martin could do quite easily since they have proved theirselves on road circuits in NASCAR.
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