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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Breakthrough Looming For Montoya?
Juan Pablo Montoya has been fast at Martinsville...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted March 27, 2010   Martinsville, VA
Juan Pablo Montoya is currently in 22nd position in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series points standings. (Photo: Getty Images)
When Juan Pablo Montoya and Chip Ganassi announced in July 2006 that the Colombian-born superstar would leave Formula One to race in NASCAR, it made international headlines.

After spending the first couple of years in NASCAR learning to master the nuances of stock-car racing, Montoya qualified for the Chase for the Sprint Cup for the first time last season. And while he has that to his credit, as well as a road-course victory at Infineon Raceway in 2007, Montoya has not won a race on an oval track in 114 career Sprint Cup starts.

That very well could change with the running of Sunday’s Goody’s Fast Pain Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway.

The tiny 0.526-mile Martinsville track historically is one of the toughest for drivers to master, but Montoya has taken to it like a duck to water. In six career starts here, Montoya has an excellent finishing average of 11.000, including a third-place run last October.

The only three active racers with better Martinsville finishing averages than Montoya are Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin, who have combined to win 15 Martinsville Cup races.

This time around, Montoya was sixth in Friday’s practice and fourth in the first round Saturday, both of which bode well for his prospects on Sunday. Unfortunately for Montoya, qualifying was rained out Friday, which means he’ll start the race 22nd, his current position in car owner points.

Montoya has his own theory about why he’s good at Martinsville.

“You have a lot of braking that I was used to doing. I think that helps. It has been a race track where I never thought we were that good but we were a 10th, 12th place car always. Last time we came here, we had a really good finish, we had a really good car. This year it seems the car has a little more pace than last year, it is pretty exciting.”

Win or lose, though, Montoya is ready for a reversal of fortune when it comes to this year’s abysmal racing luck. And if he wants to contend for a NASCAR Sprint Cup championship as he did last year, a good run on Sunday would be an important building block towards getting him back on track.

“I think in this race there really isn’t any planned strategy,” said Montoya. “You want to finish, you want to score points. You look at Bristol, we didn’t do anything wrong, they wrecked in front of us and took us with them. It is part of racing. Out of five races, we have had three wrecks. It makes it really hard. Hard for the points. The bright side out of it is that we have a really fast car and we have led four out of five races. I think that is really exciting and I think here we can lead again, hopefully we lead the right (laps).”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEEDtv.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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Tom Jensen

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