Last year Juan Pablo Montoya’s three-year tenure in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series was beginning to pay off. He made the Chase to the Cup and was ready for a breakthrough oval win.
The upward momentum, of last year, seems stuck in neutral as the Columbian-born driver stands 19th in the points. Now he’s looking for a breakthrough.
Actually he’s ahead of where he was last year. In the first 12 races, last year, he had no top-five finishes and four top-ten finishes. This year he has four top five finishes and six top-tens. The difference is five finishes of 34th or worse. Either he’s in contention for the win or he’s been nowhere.
Montoya explains “I'll be honest with you. We were only 50 points out going into Dover and we had a failure on the rear of both cars. Really hurt us. We lost about 60 or 70 points more than where we were because we were actually looking pretty good there.
We seemed to have cars to run top five nearly every week. You know, races are running out, so we definitely have to have good results the next few weeks. Hopefully what we do is good enough to get us where we need to be.”
Although Hendrick Motor Sports and Joe Gibbs Racing are the class of the field, Montoya’s team, Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, has measurably narrowed the gap. Closing that gap is the question of the season.
Montoya thinks that Ganassi’s visibility with the Cup team makes a big difference. “Sometimes you need him to push more people. It just depends how everything is running, how everything is running smooth. I think the Indy program is running smooth. He's been around that program long enough that it's very stable.
I think the NASCAR program was a little more unstable. He needs to be more hands on and he's done it, so it's pretty nice to see.”
Part of the team’s success, in spite of mechanical problems might be attributed to Jamie McMurray reuniting with his former boss, Ganassi, and the Daytona 500 win doesn’t hurt.
“I think overall it's great to have two cars running as good as they're running. I think Jamie has done a really good job. I don't think he was ever comfortable in a Roush car. When you talk to him how the cars were and things, you know, when you have so many drivers, unless you're the number one, two or three driver, then you're going to have a problem,” said Montoya.
“I think us with a smaller team, smaller organization, works really well. There's a lot of focus on making sure both cars run well, to build really good racecars. It works pretty well. I got to say I'm really happy how he's running, how we're running as a company. It's exciting.”
The upward momentum, of last year, seems stuck in neutral as the Columbian-born driver stands 19th in the points. Now he’s looking for a breakthrough.
Actually he’s ahead of where he was last year. In the first 12 races, last year, he had no top-five finishes and four top-ten finishes. This year he has four top five finishes and six top-tens. The difference is five finishes of 34th or worse. Either he’s in contention for the win or he’s been nowhere.
Montoya explains “I'll be honest with you. We were only 50 points out going into Dover and we had a failure on the rear of both cars. Really hurt us. We lost about 60 or 70 points more than where we were because we were actually looking pretty good there.
We seemed to have cars to run top five nearly every week. You know, races are running out, so we definitely have to have good results the next few weeks. Hopefully what we do is good enough to get us where we need to be.”
Although Hendrick Motor Sports and Joe Gibbs Racing are the class of the field, Montoya’s team, Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, has measurably narrowed the gap. Closing that gap is the question of the season.
Montoya thinks that Ganassi’s visibility with the Cup team makes a big difference. “Sometimes you need him to push more people. It just depends how everything is running, how everything is running smooth. I think the Indy program is running smooth. He's been around that program long enough that it's very stable.
I think the NASCAR program was a little more unstable. He needs to be more hands on and he's done it, so it's pretty nice to see.”
Part of the team’s success, in spite of mechanical problems might be attributed to Jamie McMurray reuniting with his former boss, Ganassi, and the Daytona 500 win doesn’t hurt.
“I think overall it's great to have two cars running as good as they're running. I think Jamie has done a really good job. I don't think he was ever comfortable in a Roush car. When you talk to him how the cars were and things, you know, when you have so many drivers, unless you're the number one, two or three driver, then you're going to have a problem,” said Montoya.
“I think us with a smaller team, smaller organization, works really well. There's a lot of focus on making sure both cars run well, to build really good racecars. It works pretty well. I got to say I'm really happy how he's running, how we're running as a company. It's exciting.”