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CUP: Montoya Leads List Of Drivers To Watch
Written by: Tom Jensen   
06/18/2009
Sonoma, CA
 
Juan Pablo Montoya, driver of the #42 Target Chevrolet, has one victory and a sixth-place finish at Infineon Raceway. (Photo: Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR) ยป More Photos

Usually, SPEEDtv.com’s weekly list of top five drivers for the next race is a pretty straightforward affair: Go through the weekly statistics and some obvious favorites emerge.

Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway is a wholly different animal, though. While probably half of the NASCAR Sprint Cup field genuinely loathes road racing and therefore can be dismissed out of hand, the other half is deep from top to bottom.

To wit: Robby Gordon is 34th in the Cup points standings, Scott Speed is 35th and David Gilliland 37th. On a typical week at an oval track, they would have roughly the same odds of winning as they would of hitting the lottery.

But throw in a bunch of right turns on the 12-turn, 1.99-mile Infineon road course and the playing field all of a sudden gets very level. Gordon is a past winner at Infineon, Speed learned road racing on this very track at the Jim Russell Driving School and Gilliland finished second here last year. Then there are the road-course ringers in the field, Ron Fellows, Patrick Carpentier and Boris Said topping the list.

You also have the traditional road-course powerhouses like Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart, as well as some guys who’ve improved greatly in recent years on the road course such as Denny Hamlin. And as Kyle Busch showed last year, pit strategy is everything here.

With that said, here’s
this week’s Five To Watch:

1. Juan Pablo Montoya While it’s true that Montoya’s team, Earnhardt Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates, has not been one of the front runners this year, it’s impossible to deny Montoya’s proven road-course ability. In two races at Infineon, the expatriate Formula 1 and CART star has one victory and a sixth-place finish.

And let’s not overlook the fact that Montoya quietly has had a very productive year so far in his EGR Chevrolet Impala SS. Despite not having a single top-five finish in the first 15 races of 2009, Montoya is ninth in Sprint Cup points, a mere 43 markers out of the 12th and final spot in the Chase for the Sprint Cup. This weekend will be a perfect opportunity for him to make up ground.

2. Tony Stewart There’s not much one can say about Stewart that hasn’t been said already. He’s having a monster first season as co-owner/driver of Stewart-Haas Racing, surprisingly leading the points on the basis of seven top-five and 11 top-10 finishes in 15 starts. He’s hot right now and only gets better as summer rolls on.

And he is an awesome road racer. For his Sprint Cup career, Stewart has six road-course victories and three runner-up finishes. He won here in 2001 and ’05, and absolutely no one would be surprised if he did it again on Sunday.


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