Earnhardt Ganassi Racing's Juan Pablo Montoya remains focused on victory lane
Earnhardt Ganassi Racing's Juan Pablo Montoya has been one of the biggest surprises of the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup season. // Jim Fluharty, NASCAR Scene
FORT WORTH, Texas – Juan Pablo Montoya certainly doesn’t have room to harbor much regret over the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup season. After all, this is the first year the Earnhardt Ganassi Racing driver made the Chase For The Sprint Cup – and the season when he showed the promise of his young stock-car career.
While Montoya spent the preseason discussing what he believed was the ability of his team to make the Chase, his 25th position in the standings last season – a year in which he scored only three top-10 finishes – led some to question the validity of that potential.
Now, after not only making the Chase but earning five finishes of fourth or better in the opening seven races of the championship-determining segment, Montoya has silenced his critics.
Has he also set himself up to be a preseason favorite for the championship race next year?
“I think if you sit down today with [crew chief] Brian [Pattie] or if you sit down today and say what do we need to do next year, what have we missed? We missed winning races because we started too far behind and to close the gap is really hard,” Montoya said of the season in which he has 17 top-10 finishes, seven of them top-fives, but no win to this point. “So you think you have to win races. And if you win races by the time you get to the Chase you should be in the top-five in points, that would be something that you should aim at.
“At the same time, you can start next year and run 15th and you don’t even know what hit you. We know what we did, we know how hard we had to work over the winter last year to get where we were and to stay here we’re going to have to keep doing the same and Brian understands it and everybody in the shop does. Hopefully we can keep improving and give ourselves a shot at winning races next year. That would be nice.”
Still, Montoya has maintained throughout this season that he was focused on learning as much as possible. Transitioning from Formula One was expected to be difficult, but Montoya clearly has a handle on stock cars in his third full season in the series.
That philosophy continues in the final three races.
As Montoya prepares for the final surge, he can’t help but recognize how much improvement his team has shown this season. He enters Sunday’s Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway fourth in the standings, 239 points behind series leader Jimmie Johnson.
“It would be nice if we could get a win out of these three races,” he said. “We’ve worked really hard all year. I don’t know. We’ll see what happens. Overall, I think it’s been a great season. If you sit down and look back a year ago where we were in points and where everything was going and where we are right now, I’d say it’s been a great season.
“I think we learned a lot. I think we’re a lot better than what anybody expected. Not only that we made the Chase but right now we’re not far from the Hendrick [Motorsports] cars. We’re the only car running up there with them and that is great to see so I’m pretty happy about that.”
