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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Montoya Welcomes Talladega Return
Juan Pablo Montoya finished second at Talladega in April 2008...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted October 27, 2009   Charlotte, NC
Juan Pablo Montoya is currently in fifth place in the NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup points standings. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

When you spend your entire career racing lightweight, high-downforce open-wheel cars, learning how to wrestle a 3,450-pound Sprint Cup car around is a difficult and time-consuming process. And mastering both the nuances and politics of restrictor-plate racing? That can be downright daunting.

But not when you’re Juan Pablo Montoya, the wheelman extraordinaire who is in the middle of a breakthrough third season in NASCAR after a long career in CART and Formula 1.

Montoya actually likes plate racing, running in huge packs, inches apart for 500 miles, as the field will do Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway in the AMP Energy 500, race No. 7 in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

“For a fan, it doesn’t get much better than that,” said Montoya. “I get a kick out of it. I always get a kick out of it.”

Truth be told, Montoya’s gotten a kick out of most of the places he’s gone lately. With the exception of Lowe’s Motor Speedway, where he got caught up in a pile-up not of his own making and finished 35th, he’d been dead nuts on in the Chase for the Sprint Cup. In the other five Chase races, he’s finished third three times and fourth twice.

That’s five top-five finishes in his last six races, which given that he had only seven top fives in his first 100 Sprint Cup starts is downright amazing.

That he’s probably too far back to catch Jimmie Johnson for the 2009 Sprint Cup championship has not dimmed his enthusiasm one iota. While a lot of his peers are feeling the enormous pressure of expectations, Montoya has been the very epitome of cool and relaxed.

And he’ll take that approach this weekend again at Talladega, a place where he finished second in April 2008.

“It is like the same thing every week,” Montoya said. “You go there (Talladega), especially there, you are going to save the engines. You come off the truck with whatever you think is fastest. And if it doesn’t do anything crazy, you park the car. You probably do 10 laps of practice; make sure all the temperatures look good. Qualify the car and race it and see what happens.”

Montoya himself professes to be curious about exactly how the race will unfold this time around.

“It will interesting to see what kind of strategy you play during the race,” he said. “Because there is always two ways of looking at it. Do you need points and you want to try and lead as many laps? Or do you play it conservative and play it out at the end? It is always a challenge especially with the side-by-side restarts; it is going to be, ‘Whew, pretty wild.’ I think it is going to be cool.”

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or Speed Channel

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. He is the author of ?Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED,? and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association. Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing. The Answer Man is back at SPEEDtv.com. Tom Jensen answers your questions during every race week and looks forward to hearing from you - please e-mail it to




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