Juan Pablo Montoya finally making noise in NASCAR's Sprint Cup Series

By Rea White - Associate Editor

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

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You might think that Juan Pablo Montoya would have expected to set the NASCAR world on fire from the start.

After all, he was the 1999 champion of the U.S. open-wheel series known as Championship Auto Racing Teams. He won the Indianapolis 500 in 2000. He competed in Formula One from 2001 to 2006, earning seven wins, including the prestigious Monaco Grand Prix, 30 podium finishes and 13 pole positions.

And then he turned his attention to NASCAR, running one Cup race in 2006 before embarking on a full-time career in the series. Driving for team owner Chip Ganassi with the team that is now Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, he earned his first and only career win in 2007.

This year, though, he's challenging for a spot in the Chase For The Sprint Cup that will determine the season championship.

Accustomed to success and ushered into the sport on a wave of expectation, Montoya might have been forgiven if he'd expected to easily continue the success of the past.

That, though, would be incorrect.

Now in his third full season, Montoya says that he was realistic when he made the move to stock cars.

“When I came here, my expectations were not that high," the native of Bogota, Colombia, says. "I knew it was going to take time. I knew there were going to be good races. There were going to be weeks when everything clicked and we were going to run great, and it happened, but there were going to be a lot of weeks where it was going to be trouble.

"When I came to Ganassi the team was running OK, but it wasn’t a great team, so we’ve done a lot of work over the last couple of years to get where we are. It has been hard. Last year was a tough a season, changing crew chiefs and everything. I think the ability is there and the momentum is there; we’ve just got to keep the ball rolling.”

And gradually he has gained momentum.

He has also gained the respect of his NASCAR peers.

Veteran Mark Martin, one of the most respected drivers in the sport, said recently that one of the reasons he wanted to stay in the sport a little longer was to be able to race Montoya.

"I wanted to be around to see that and be a part of that and be able to race with him and stuff," he said, "… I believe that what he has done is incredible - to come to this sport from the racing that he came from and to do what he’s done and what he’s doing every week is pretty spectacular.”

Montoya, meanwhile, just focused on gaining ground in the sport.

This year, that’s paying off. He's 12th in the standings with a tenuous hold on the final spot that will make the championship-determining field.

He’s focused on racing smart. Instead of continually chasing that second career win, he’s working on consistent top performances – the kind that could land him in the Chase.

He’s trying to race smart.

Is that frustrating?

“No, it’s what this sport is all about,” he said. “It’s all about making the Chase, and we’re doing everything in our power from the team to myself to the crew chief making the calls and being smart. I think if you could run like top-five every week then you could get away with being a little more aggressive. We’re not.

“We’re running top-10, not top-five. We’re making a lot of changes in the car, finding new ways to make the car faster. I don’t think we want to bring this to the wire. It might happen, but if we can avoid going to Richmond being on the bubble, that would be awesome.”

As a matter of fact, Montoya says it’s just like racing in Formula One.

At the end of the day, a driver is certainly racing for wins but also for points and titles. Not that a driver is forfeiting the shot at wins in the hunt for the other. If one does race well and continually run in the top five, then the wins will start to come as well.

“You want to win races, but at the end of the day you’re sometimes better finishing third than getting involved in a wreck,” he said. “It’s the same thing. You've just got to be race smart. It’s not cautious, just a little more smart.”

Overall, though, Montoya seems pleased with his transition.

While some in NASCAR are quick to criticize the new-model Cup car or the type of racing it creates, Montoya can make comparisons to the world’s top racing series.

And when he does that, he finds things that make racing more fun, make this car more of a challenge.

He says combining elements of all the top racing series would make for the perfect sport – but seems to think the racing here is the most competitive.

“For the things I’ve driven, it handles horribly, but the old car did as well,” he said. “But for racing, it’s the best car I’ve driven. If you could combine the way an open-wheel car drives with the racing that we have, it would be the ideal race series. I’ve driven all the great cars, but the racing has always been terrible. This racing is incredible. I love it. I get a kick out of it.

“In Formula One when you used to get some rentals and go and play with friends it was more exciting. This is what I get here. You race close to everybody. You pass cars, and cars pass you. It’s hard to keep up with everything happening. In Formula One nothing happens. You come in, you go, you come in, you go, and that’s it. You never come in with everybody into the pits together because there’s not even two stalls to come in. When there’s a caution [and] everybody comes in, the guy running behind gets screwed. It’s what this sport is.”

Now, he’d like to be one of the 12 drivers contending for the championship this September.

Can he and his Brian Pattie-led team make it? Montoya certainly believes they can .

“The problem is that there are 16 to 20 cars that are Chase teams and are capable of making the Chase,” he says.

Therefore, they need to be as smart in their approach and run as well as possible without being so aggressive that they hamper their own effort.

“We’re running hard every week, and I’m trying to finish as good as we can, being careful as well,,” he said prior to racing at New Hampshire last Sunday. “Trying to race as smart as we can, and it’s working. Here we’re 12th in points but still 10 races to go, it’s a long way. We’ve just got to keep focusing on what we’ve been doing the last five or six weeks, that is trying to bring the car in the top-10 every week.”

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1 response to "Juan Pablo Montoya finally making noise in NASCAR's Sprint Cup Series".

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arttidesco said:
Jul 1, 2009 at 2:30 AM
Go JPM ! :-)
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