After a blown pit call at the Brickyard 400, and a misunderstanding, last week at Pocono, things were not well between Juan Pablo Montoya and crew chief Brian Pattie.
Montoya thought that the best chance at his first, and elusive, oval NASCAR win escaping him, at Indianapolis, was his crew chief’s fault.
It seems that was erased with a powerful victory at the former 2.45 mile, former Formula One, circuit at Watkins Glen. Montoya passed race favorite, Marcos Ambrose on a late race restart and romped to a 4.7 second victory over Kurt Busch who also overtook the Australian for second shortly before the end. The Colombian led 74 of 90-laps on the 2.45-mile road course and ran away from the field down the stretch. (Ambrose won the Nationwide race on Saturday). "It's about time," said Montoya who has had a number of DNF’s this year on top of his disappointments. "We've lost a lot of them, gave away a lot of them. It gets frustrating, everybody's fighting." This was Montoya’s first victory since winning at Sonoma 2007, 113 races previously. Pattie, who radioed to Montoya earlier “I’m sorry” for pit stop tire call errors. "It's huge," Pattie said, fighting back tears. "I still want to win on an oval. He wants to prove his point. The Brickyard was my fault. Hope this makes up for it. Trophies mean a lot. It's pretty cool." Busch said: “I felt like today was a big morale victory to come in between those two guys because of the different backgrounds of racing, the way they've matured. If Ambrose wouldn't have stalled his car, he would have taken Sonoma.” Ambrose, who threw away a certain victory at Sonoma, in June, explained: "It’s been a good weekend for me. I got to tell you doesn't feel nice finishing third. I want to win so bad in the Cup Series, this was a really good chance for me. We had a good racecar. Something went wrong in the last pit stop. We lost the handle on the racecar, maybe a different set of tires, slightly different spring rate in the tires. We lost the handle on it.” AJ Allmendinger, who just announced a contract extension at RPM, finished fourth. "Actually, it was pretty easy today!” joked AJ. “We didn’t have anything for the Montoya or Ambrose, but I’m still pretty happy with the day and really proud of the team.” With Franchitti’s IndyCar win at Mid-Ohio and Saturday’s Grand-Am victory by Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas, Chip Ganassi a hat-trick for the weekend as a car owner. This season’s winningest drivers, Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin, were eliminated from contention after Kyle Busch made a "dive-bomb" move causing Johnson to take an evasive move but, after bouncing off a guard-rail was struck by Hamlin who had nowhere to go on lap 71. Patrick Carpentier, of Quebec, finished 21rst and said: “It was a lot of fun. I thought we fought hard out there and I want to thank the No. 26 Air National Guard team for all their hard work today. It was a crazy ride out there, but a lot of fun. I felt like we held our own pretty well.” Ron Fellows, a previous winner here in Nationwide races, finished 40th.
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