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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Montoya’s Hopes Go Bump In The Night
Juan Pablo Montoya had his worst finish of the season Saturday night...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted October 18, 2009   Charlotte, NC
Juan Pablo Montoya's pit crew prepares to put a new right rear fender on the car after an early accident damaged the No. 42 at Lowe's Motor Speedway. (Photo Credit: Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)

All season long, Juan Pablo Montoya had used strategy to perfection to position him for his first NASCAR championship run. And it only took one mistake for it all to go very, very wrong.

Montoya entered Saturday night’s NASCAR Banking 500 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, a close third in points, just 58 markers back of leader Jimmie Johnson. In each of the first four Chase races, he had finished third or fourth, giving him a remarkable finishing average of 3.5.

All that went out the window this weekend, though.

Montoya qualified 18th at LMS, his worst start of the Chase. His race started off OK — by Lap 20, he was up to eighth place and he got to sixth place by the one-quarter distance of the 334-lap race.

But then Kyle Busch spun coming out of Turn 4 on Lap 120, bringing out a caution flag. On the ensuing restart on Lap 125, someone in front of Montoya spun his tires, creating a stack up. Montoya’s No. 42 Earnhardt Ganassi Racing Chevrolet was rammed from behind by Mark Martin, heavily damaging the rear end. The contact shoved Montoya into the car ahead of him, also causing some front-end damage.

“Well they all kind of went and then they checked up and I checked up and I don't know somebody didn't slow down and just ripped of the whole rear of the car,” said Montoya. “Then I got hit into the car in front of us. I don't know, just one of those deals.”

That ruined the handling on Montoya’s car, and on Lap 164, he spun out in Turn 4. After his crew attempted to repair the damage, Montoya rejoined the fray, but finished the race 35th, four laps down.

The worst finish of the season for Montoya dropped him from third in points, 58 back of Johnson to sixth, a whopping 195 points back. And that 3.5 finishing average after four races in the Chase? It’s now 9.8. Barring a miracle, his championship hopes are now through.

To his credit, Montoya was fairly philosophical about the whole thing. “It is what it is and you've just got to move on,” said Montoya. “Everybody in this Lysol car today was pretty impressive. We had one of our fastest cars. Not much we can do. We worked as hard as we could and we did all what we thought was possible and today the best we could do was 35th.”

Of course, Montoya could afford to shrug it off. The EGR outfit competes with a fraction of the budget of the powerhouse Hendrick squad, and so to get this far — to make the Chase for the Sprint Cup and post four consecutive top fives — the team already has exceeded expectations. Once he qualified for the Chase, JPM was playing with house money and he knew it.

“Oh, it's okay. It's racing,” he said. “If you're expecting to have 10 clean races then you're dreaming. We knew it could happen and here, always the restarts are an issue and I managed to slow down and I just got hit from behind. It happens.”

Asked if Saturday night’s result was a worst-case scenario, Montoya said it wasn’t.

“For what? We made the Chase and up until today we had four top fives in a row and what's bad about it, you know what I mean. We were actually surprised; everybody on the team is doing such a good job that even today we had a faster car than the No. 48.”

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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