Juan Pablo Montoya focused on making Chase - not losing Martin Truex Jr. as teammate
Earnhardt Ganassi Racing's Juan Pablo Montoya is 11th in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series standings after 18 races this season. // Chuck Yadmark, NASCAR Scene
JOLIET, Ill. – Juan Pablo Montoya doesn’t seem the least bit bothered by the decision of teammate Martin Truex Jr. to leave Earnhardt Ganassi Racing at the end of the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup season.
Truex, who announced on Tuesday that he is vacating his spot as driver of EGR’s No. 1 Chevrolet to compete for Michael Waltrip Racing in 2010, has been a teammate to Montoya since the offseason merger of Dale Earnhardt Inc. and Chip Ganassi Racing.
“Good for him, you know what I mean?” Montoya, speaking on Thursday at Chicagoland Speedway, said with a twinge of sarcasm. “If he wanted to go and he thinks he has more stability at Waltrip’s good for him. It doesn’t really … you know what I mean. Ourselves as a team, we’ve got to look for the good things or the bad things. If he decided to go – I think he said he had too many questions [about EGR] – tough luck. Hopefully, he runs better there.”
Montoya has been the better of the two full-time EGR drivers this season, as he is 11th in the standings and Truex is 24th. Unlike Truex, Montoya has a strong shot at qualifying for NASCAR’s 10-race Chase For The Sprint Cup out of which the series champion is crowned. So he’s thinking about that more than Truex’s impending departure.
“For us it’s more of right now my focus is not on who’s going to be my teammate or whatever,” Montoya said. “My focus right now is making the Chase and making sure this team performs good.”
As for the performance of his Brian Pattie-led group, Montoya couldn’t be much happier.
The former open-wheel star has posted five top-10s in the last seven races.
“I think we’re better prepared than ever as a team,” he said. “I think our pit crew’s working, we’re having good pit stops now. We’re having good calls from the races, good strategy. I think in the time that we’ve been together with Brian over here, the engineering side, we’ve been developing from the beginning and everything is really coming together.
“Most of the guys are the same guys and mechanics working on the car, so we’ve really got the ball rolling and we’ve got a lot of momentum.”
