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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Montoya Says Patrick Transition Difficult
Former Formula One driver Juan Pablo Montoya offers his thoughts about Danica Patrick in NASCAR...
Mike Hembree  |  Posted January 27, 2010   Concord, NC
It will be a while before Danica Patrick (Left) races with Juan Pablo Montoya (Right) in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

DanicaMania is less than a fortnight away. The world’s most famous female racer is scheduled to make her stock car debut in the Lucas Oil Slick Mist 200 Automobile Racing Club of America race Feb. 6 at Daytona International Speedway.

Patrick will be in a media zoo of sorts this season as she continues to race Indycars while running a largely experimental, part-time program in the NASCAR Nationwide Series, with some ARCA flavor tossed in for the extra learning applications.

Few drivers will have been under such a spotlight from so many different angles. One who knows pressures of this sort is Juan Pablo Montoya, who gave up safety and comfort in Formula One to leap into NASCAR four years ago. Montoya was widely regarded as one of the best race car drivers in the world, but there was skepticism surrounding how well he might do in such a different environment, as there always is when open-wheel stars of any background transfer to heavier stock cars against world-class competition.

Montoya made the transition in style, learning steadily and making enough advances to qualify for the Chase for the Sprint Cup last year despite driving for a team not at the sport’s highest level.

Montoya has made it clear that he thinks Patrick would fare better choosing either Indycar or NASCAR racing – not both. Moving from heavier, full-bodied stock cars to the relatively skeletal Indycar machines from week to week is a difficult task, he said, not to mention the burdens of travel and working with separate teams and sanctioning bodies.

Should she have concerns?

“I think it’s a long list, to be honest,” Montoya said. “I think she’ll be fine in Daytona with the restrictor plates. I think at California (Auto Club Speedway) she’s going to be surprised. For open wheel, California is a really banked place. For stock cars it’s a really flat place.

“When we ran the Indy cars there, California was a fast superspeedway. You go wide open all the way around – 240 mph. With your eyes closed you could do it. In stock cars you have to lift, you have to brake. The seams are an issue. A lot of things are an issue that aren’t with open wheel cars.”

That sort of transition, Montoya said, will mark Patrick’s major hurdle. And, he said, not only will she discover that matters change from week to week but also from moment to moment.

“In open wheel, if you have the best car you go out and win the race,” he said. “Here you have the best car and you come in the pits and they change the car and all of a sudden you don’t have the best car. Somebody else does. Keeping up with the track and everybody else who’s on the track and the temperatures and everything, it’s really hard. It makes it interesting, but it’s something you have to learn and keep up with.”

Montoya said Patrick shouldn’t have problems manhandling stock cars despite her size and inexperience.

“Physically, she’ll be fine,” he said. “If she can drive an Indy car, she can do this. The temperatures (inside the cars) might be the only thing. But the fitness level you have to have to drive an open-wheel car counts.”

Patrick is scheduled to drive a limited Nationwide schedule in Chevrolets fielded by JR Motorsports. In her continuing role as a pop culture star, she will appear in more provocative commercials for the team’s sponsor, GoDaddy.com, during the Super Bowl.

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