Juan Pablo Montoya says he’s over Indianapolis heartbreak
Juan Pablo Montoya is over the rough run he had at Indy.
// Jim Fluharty, NASCAR Illustrated
LONG POND, Pa. – Juan Pablo Montoya left Indianapolis Motor Speedway last Sunday not angry with his crew chief but just frustrated with the situation where he wrecked after trying to rally from seventh following a four-tire pit stop late in the Brickyard 400.
Speaking publicly about the heartbreak for the first time Friday at Pocono Raceway, Montoya said he got over it in minutes but didn’t want to talk as he was still afraid he’d say something out of frustration to the media that he would end up regretting.
Montoya wrecked his car trying to pass Carl Edwards with 16 laps remaining in the race, leaving him and crew chief Brian Pattie to figure out how two years in a row they had lost the Brickyard 400. Last year, a speeding penalty doomed Montoya after he led 116 laps. Last Sunday, he led 86 laps before the pit call put him behind several drivers who had taken only two tires.
“One of these days that race will go into our hands,” Montoya said. “It sucks that we’ve been so fast three years in a row with one I blew, the other one was a call that wasn’t ideal. You know last time I screwed up there, Brian didn’t say anything to me. He said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’
“At the same time, do I gain anything by getting mad? No. It sucks that in traffic we couldn’t do anything and I was actually pretty loose getting into the corners by myself and when the 99 [of Edwards] dive-bombed me, I kind of turned right a little when I came back. As soon as I turned right, I knew I wasn’t going to come out of that corner pointing the right way.”
The former Formula One driver said it wasn’t a matter of just going for broke when he wrecked.
“It was kind of weird because I was trying to slow down early enough and just in traffic it was so different,” Montoya said. “I made a couple of mistakes in traffic and a couple of guys passed me and I was OK with it. As soon as we [had] restarted and I went into Turn 2, I knew that winning the race was very unlikely.
“It would have been nice to take some decent points. I had the 99 beside me and I just tried to run around the outside, but as soon as I started turning, they said ‘inside’ and I gave him the room and when I turned back in it just – I was either going to spin and get T-boned or hit the fence and I hit the fence.”
Even though he has history in open-wheel cars and has won the Indianapolis 500, Montoya said losing at Indianapolis that way would carry the same disappointment as Martinsville. He said the only track he really ever wanted to win at specifically was Monaco, and he did that in Formula One.
“As a driver, you just want to run as best as you can every week and we need to make ourselves better to give ourselves more shots at winning and see what happens,” Montoya said.
This week, he’s starting second in the Sunoco Red Cross Pennsylvania 500.
“I know it’s kind of crazy because last week we ran so good but overall on the other tracks we haven’t really run as good as we need to in the big tracks,” said Montoya, who has credited mostly bad luck for a season where he is 22nd in the standings. “In the small tracks we run really well. We’re trying a little bit different approach on the car and it seems to be working.”
