AUTO RACING
Road Racing Experience Favors Montoya
Published: Jun 22, 2007
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Plenty of people in the racing world believed Juan Pablo Montoya's immense racing talent would transfer to NASCAR immediately.
It hasn't happened. And as Montoya has struggled to an average finish of 24.2 and 23rd-place standing in the Nextel Cup points after 14 races, the media attention has faded.
But this week is different. The Cup circuit is making the first of its two annual stops on a road course - the kind used on the world circuit - and the expectations for Montoya in Sunday's Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma, Calif., again are great.
And Montoya is doing little to diffuse them.
"When I came to NASCAR, I had 20 races on ovals, and the rest of my life was on road courses, so road courses are natural for me," he said. "Do we have a chance to win? Yes. Will we win? I don't know. Road courses are long, and anything can happen. It's the first time for the Car of Tomorrow on a road course."
Chip Ganassi Racing, the team that fields Montoya's No. 42 Dodge, has been behind with its COT program. The only teams that have been really good with NASCAR's next-generation race car are Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing and Richard Childress Racing.
That makes Hendrick, with five-time Sonoma winner Jeff Gordon, and Gibbs, with road-racing ace Tony Stewart, the favorites this weekend. Hendrick has the additional advantage of having an extensive road racing testing program with former open-wheel driver Max Papis.
But nobody has a road racing background like Montoya, a native of Colombia who spent 14 years racing go-karts on road and street courses before winning the CART championship in 1999 and, eventually, seven races in Formula One.
In the one NASCAR road race he has competed in - the Busch Series event on the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez course in Mexico City early this year - Montoya fell back to 19th, then rallied to win, knocking teammate Scott Pruett out of the way.
"It was great to get my first NASCAR Busch win there, but after what I did there they think I'm going to come here and blow them away," Montoya said. "We'll probably do good, but I'd be very surprised if we just go out and blow them away. It'd be nice, but I don't think it will be that simple."
Veteran driver Ricky Rudd, once one of the premier road racers in NASCAR, thinks Montoya can be a contender at Sonoma, but not because of his F1 background.
"In a lot of ways, that can be a detriment because those [F1] cars are so light and agile compared to a heavy Cup car," he said. "But I would not rule him out, especially based on what I saw at Mexico City.
"At least 95 percent of your passing is done under braking for the corners at Infineon, and that's where he excels. Nobody drives any deeper in the corners and gets by with it like Juan."
Montoya agrees that it's his road racing experience and skill as a whole rather than his time in F1 that should make him a threat.
"Braking distance in a NASCAR car is a lot longer," he said. "To pass, it's not how much later and harder you brake, it's how fast or slow you decelerate the car through the braking. You don't need to clear the guy when you get to the braking area; you just need to get to his side."
Montoya's Nextel Cup results have been unspectacular. Although he leads the Rookie of the Year standings by a slight margin over David Ragan and he has performed on par with his two teammates, his lone top-five finish was a fifth at Atlanta in March, and he hasn't had a top-15 finish since he took eighth at Texas in mid-April. Along the way, he has taken heat from other drivers for the NASCAR equivalent of throwing a lot of elbows.
The Atlanta race remains Montoya's lone really impressive effort. He looked strong enough to win until brushing the wall while challenging eventual winner Jimmie Johnson for third on a late restart.
Although nothing has come easily in NASCAR, Montoya insists he doesn't regret vacating his F1 ride with McLaren-Mercedes - which has become the dominant team with rookie sensation Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso - for a vastly different type of racing.
"There is nothing like driving a Formula One car, but there's nothing like racing a NASCAR," he said. "Does a Formula One car handle 100 times better than a NASCAR car? Yes. Does it have more technology? Yes. Everybody knows that. But is racing a NASCAR 100 times better than racing an F1 car? Yes."
Reporter Tony Fabrizio can be reached at 813-259-7994 or afabrizio@tampatrib.com.
