Juan Pablo Montoya finishes third at Martinsville but can't gain ground in Chase
Earnhardt Ganassi Racing's Juan Pablo Montoya finished third in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Tums Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway. // Chuck Yadmark, NASCAR Scene
MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Juan Pablo Montoya must be getting tired of earning top finishes but losing ground to Hendrick Motorsports' Jimmie Johnson in the standings, but one wouldn't know it to hear his comments on the issue.
Montoya found himself in that position again Sunday, when he finished third in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Tums Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway. It's Montoya's third third-place finish in the Chase For The Sprint Cup. Of course, his title hopes took a huge hit when he finished 35th at Lowe's Motor Speedway in the previous race, but other than that he has five finishes of fourth or better in the Chase - and trails leader Johnson by 200 points.
Sunday, Johnson finished second to Montoya's third, gaining a little more ground on the Earnhardt Ganassi Racing driver. So even without the setback at Lowe's, Montoya would be off Johnson's pace in this Chase.
What would it take for him to win it?
"You've got to say the 48 team [of Johnson] is doing an amazing job and they deserve everything they're doing right now," Montoya said Sunday. "Do we want to beat them? Yeah, we want to beat them. But it's not over. You've got to be honest, you go to Talladega and he might have a bad race, or even the race after. He might blow a motor have a bad pit stop.
"There's still a lot of racing to go, so anything can happen. We've just got to keep running hard and hope for the best."
At this point, Montoya is simply doing all that he can to gain ground.
Unfortunately, Johnson is doing even better - so much so that a setback similar to the one Montoya endured might not be enough to give up the title.
"The way he's running, you've probably got to win the next five races and he's got to have some bad luck," Montoya said. "But for us right now this is our first Chase, we're learning to see what we have to do, how aggressive you've got to run. I think one of the things we learned, next year somehow we've got to win some races before the Chase. I think when you start so far behind already when the Chase starts, you don't have any cushion for a bad race or anything."
Overall, Montoya seemed satisfied with his performance Sunday. He closed on up Johnson from time to time and drove as aggressively as he dared. But on the final green-white-checkered restart, when he was in the second row, Montoya said that he just didn't have anything for Johnson or winner Denny Hamlin.
"I bumped him a couple times, didn't I?," he said when asked about considering getting rough with Johnson. "It wasn't to wreck, it was more just to get my nose up enough, but I couldn't put the power good enough."
