Juan Pablo Montoya: will he ever win a Cup race?

[FIRE]

Juan Pablo Montoya ended his 5th full Cup season last November. In 2009 I had really the feeling he would win some oval races and become a Chase regular in the future. But he and EGR seems to have lost it a bit.

Year	Car #	Races	Wins	Top5's	Top10's	Laps Led	Avg. Finish	Poles	Winnings
2011	#42	36	0	2	8	125	18.53	2	$4,925,169
2010	#42	36	1	6	14	411	17.97	3	$4,996,834
2009	#42	36	0	7	18	388	14.25	2	$5,214,687
2008	#42	36	0	2	3	14	23.94	0	$4,328,913
2007	#42	36	1	3	6	26	22.67	0	$4,799,589
2006	#30	1	0	0	0	0	34.00	0	$61,425

[Paradise City]

He needs some kind of revolution in attitude. When he gets into a lull, its hard to revive him and the Ganassi team don't seem to have the stuff to motivate him.

He may win at Indy or at Pocono but I don't envisage a breakthrough. I don't see him rise to level of Johnson or anything like that. Although having witnessed Stewart's transformation its hard to be too categorical about things.

[Jacques Rabbit]

Montoya wasn't designed for 400- and 500-mile races. NASCAR is a tough sport in that with frequent mass pit stops, such close racing, a number of cautions tightening up the field, the races being so long...it's impossible to do a perfect race. You or your team are going to mess something up, and as Kurt Busch let us know at Dover, even a winning car will drive like a pig all day (as it should...make them earn it). To succeed in NASCAR, you need to have an attitude for overcoming adversity because in such a long race and such a long season and given the nature of the races, **** is going to happen, all the time.

As much as I like Montoya, he can't do that. One thing goes wrong and that's it for him; he'll never recover. He just quits on the race once one mistake, whether his own or his team's or another driver's, happens and assumes he's lost. I think when you come from open-wheel, you're not used to that as much. If you have contact in NASCAR, you can recover, whereas in open-wheel, you just park it in the garage and have a few weeks off until the next race to get over it. There are a lot less pit mistakes in open-wheel, and it's less frequent to have the entire field pitting at the same time, and the races are a lot shorter that if something happens, there is no time to recover, so you just have to phone it in for the rest of the day, whereas in NASCAR, there is time to recover.

Montoya's never grasped this and by now he's never going to. He is who he is and as entertaining and loveable as that makes him, it's also the reason he'll never be among the best. He's a driver who relies on luck. If he can have a nearly-flawless day, he'll be right up there. The top-flight drivers, from Jimmie Johnson to Tony Stewart to Carl Edwards, they make their luck. Something goes wrong and they are their team's biggest cheerleaders. They know they can recover, and they know how to recover, and they do recover.

I do hope EGR can pick it up a bit with their equipment and with a new a crew chief, though.

[Speedworx]

JPM is an ok road racer. He won't ever be successful on ovals.

[gomick]

Very hard sport to be successful in... Needs a change in team, tho i dont think a top team will pick him up - unless he can bring big sponsorship!

[Mystery]

He'll win a race. Maybe Indy as said before. Heck even Reutimann, Ragan and Bayne have won. He's good enough to contend and one day that alone will be enough.

[fieldodreams79]

He did win a couple of oval races in OW racing; granted, that is apples to oranges---still fruit, though.

I see the skepticism of his oval prowess in a stockcar, but he has been pretty quick and consistent on the mile and a half and has come "close" on occasions, from what I remember. I'd say, if he was in some better equipment with a better team, he would have had one already.

[gttouring]

well he got a bullpoo penaltiy of 'speeding' on pit lane in Indy, which he was handily in control of, the NASCAR race control may not have been ready to take Indy. I found this very distasteful of a penalty, as in car and timing didn't appear he was speeding, considering how nascar measures pitlane speed with a few timing strips (as the last few pitstalls can going flying out of the lane as is often seen)

JPM can win an oval, but the money he is raking in- i am not sure he needs to as he has won in every series he enters, he has a few good championships and an Indy500 and Monaco win, he is more than an OK racer, he is really good, he has an OK attitude, which is most evident, Ganassi needs to motivate him somehow.

[Jacques Rabbit]

There are two points that the speeding penalty discussion invites, though:

1) He was doing 5.5 mph over the accepted speed limit. NASCAR will not penalize you if you are 5 mph or less over the limit. Yes, their methods aren't the most precise, but everyone is subject to the same methods. You have a 5 mph buffer and he exceeded that; it wasn't as though he got nailed for doing 55.0000001 in a 55. He was doing 60.5 mph. That 5 mph buffer serves to make sure they know the driver is really abusing the speed limit and they aren't getting a false reading.

2) Look at how he responded to his penalty. A real championship NASCAR driver would have cooled off, said "hey, I have the best damn car out here, and have all day" and just had so much drive to get to the front. Montoya didn't. He just rode around in P16. Rather than take how furious he was and let that fire him up and motivate his team and get a rally going to the front, he let how furious he was dictate a poor attitude of just giving up on the race when he had the car to move back up (I realize, he wasn't in clean air, but he was still better than P16). Instead, he threw a fit, and while he got caught up in a mess, he hadn't been going anywhere at all. It was a bad show...no resilience, no ability to overcome adversity, no tenacity. Montoya needs a race to be as close to perfect as possible to keep his head in it; he wants an F1 race where he leads lights to flag but that's not how it goes here.

I say all this as a big JPM fan.

[GTRMagic]

I think there might be short odds at JPM maintaining his crew chief the whole season...

[gttouring]

Originally Posted by Jacques Rabbit

There are two points that the speeding penalty discussion invites, though:

1) He was doing 5.5 mph over the accepted speed limit. NASCAR will not penalize you if you are 5 mph or less over the limit. Yes, their methods aren't the most precise, but everyone is subject to the same methods. You have a 5 mph buffer and he exceeded that; it wasn't as though he got nailed for doing 55.0000001 in a 55. He was doing 60.5 mph. That 5 mph buffer serves to make sure they know the driver is really abusing the speed limit and they aren't getting a false reading.

2) Look at how he responded to his penalty. A real championship NASCAR driver would have cooled off, said "hey, I have the best damn car out here, and have all day" and just had so much drive to get to the front. Montoya didn't. He just rode around in P16. Rather than take how furious he was and let that fire him up and motivate his team and get a rally going to the front, he let how furious he was dictate a poor attitude of just giving up on the race when he had the car to move back up (I realize, he wasn't in clean air, but he was still better than P16). Instead, he threw a fit, and while he got caught up in a mess, he hadn't been going anywhere at all. It was a bad show...no resilience, no ability to overcome adversity, no tenacity. Montoya needs a race to be as close to perfect as possible to keep his head in it; he wants an F1 race where he leads lights to flag but that's not how it goes here.

I say all this as a big JPM fan.

I see the penalty better now, He has shown he has trouble recovering from a bad position, here is hoping.
although i still have trouble with how they measure the pit lane speed limit, and it only squashed JPM's race that day, it has really wrecked a few others as well, this needs changing i think a couple articles i read do doubt NASCAR being fair in particular to montoya though. http://www.prnmag.com/columns/44-col...eed-limit.html
"Finally, did NASCAR pick on Montoya? Or was the penalty handed out in a completely even-handed way? In the absence of the kind of information that Knaus is asking for, we will never know."
so whether or not he keeps his head in it is one thing, getting boned and screwing his momentum is another, in this case it appeared by many accounts, he wasn't allowed to win and he knew this..

[Clive Brown]

I don't buy Montoya not being good enough to be a success at the very top level in NASCAR. In my reading of the situation, to be a consistent front runner and finisher in Cup, you need to be part of a top-line team that is part of a first-rate organisation, as well as a good working relationship with a quality crew chief. I think that the #42 team and the Earnhardt Ganassi organisation is second-rate at best; add to that the constant merry-go-round of crew chiefs on the #42, and you have the recipe for 20th+ placings in the final standings.

Discounting the four superspeedway races and the two road course events, all of which can be something of a lottery in terms of final outcomes, the #42 car above all else lacks consistency. How many times does the car run well early on, then fade towards the end? In my opinion, the great quality of the very top teams such as the #48 and the #99 is the ability of the driver to work with the crew chief to steadily improve the car throughout the race. At the #42 team, once the car has gone away from them, they rarely seem able to get it back.

Montoya has been far too loyal to Chip Ganassi. There are only five top organisations in Cup racing; HMS, JGR, Penske, RCR and RFR ( I don't count SHR as I consider them to be HMS, simply under a different flag). Montoya, who is in my view at the very least one of the top ten drivers in NASCAR, should have engineered a move to one of these several years ago. I fear, though, that time might now have passed him by.

[Jacques Rabbit]

He doesn't have good relationships with crew chiefs because he's very stubborn, very unwilling to listen, and very verbally abusive when things don't go his way. Not quite Kurt Busch levels, and unlike Kurt, JPM is a great guy off the track, but he is really hard to work with. Establishing relationships with crew chiefs and teams is a two-way street.

He has the talent, but he does not have the mindset for this style of racing.

As for being with a top-line team, teams that won in 2011:

Furniture Row Racing (#78)
Hendrick Motorsports (#24, #48)
Joe Gibbs Racing (#11, #18)
Penske Racing (#2, #22)
Red Bull Racing (#4)
Richard Childress Racing (#27, #29, #33)
Richard Petty Motorsports (#9)
Roush-Fenway Racing (#6, #17, #99)
Stewart-Haas Racing (#14, #39)
Wood Brothers Racing (#21)

I know Earnhardt-Ganassi doesn't have the best equipment, but being the number one there is better than being the number four at a super-team. The fact is, there are so many different opportunities for different drivers and teams in all kinds of situations to win races, and he hasn't. Eighteen cars over ten teams. Doesn't matter how or where...they won in the end. Even when Jamie McMurray was winning races with EGR in 2010, JPM was shut out on the ovals; same in 2009 when the equipment was great for Montoya. He can't close the deal. He doesn't have the right mental game for it.

[Clive Brown]

Doesn't your list of winning teams from 2011 rather tend to prove my point? Only four of those teams were not from the Big Five plus SHR that I listed, and they accounted for exactly four of the 36 race victories; one apiece!

Except for maybe the #9 or the #42 at either Sonoma or Watkins Glen, I wouldn't predict any winner from outside that group.

[JHamilton]

Montana will win the brickyard this year. True story.

[Jacques Rabbit]

Originally Posted by Clive Brown

Doesn't your list of winning teams from 2011 rather tend to prove my point? Only four of those teams were not from the Big Five plus SHR that I listed, and they accounted for exactly four of the 36 race victories; one apiece!

Except for maybe the #9 or the #42 at either Sonoma or Watkins Glen, I wouldn't predict any winner from outside that group.

Four victories Montoya and EGR could have won.

EGR had the cars in 2009 and 2010 to win. JPM took Watkins Glen and nothing more.

This is all coming from a big Montoya fan, too, which may be why I'm so critical of him...I want him to do better than he has done and I just think it's not fair to make excuses about it. You have to earn a top ride, if that's what he really needs to succeed, and he hasn't earned one. Sure, plenty of factors can ruin a race for a driver, but more times than acceptable has Montoya ruined his own race, or ruined a race for another driver, and that's not how you climb the ladder. He's loyal to Ganassi because Ganassi's the only owner loyal to him. He looked around this summer, looked at JGR, looked elsewhere...they didn't want him.

[Clive Brown]

Originally Posted by Jacques Rabbit

Four victories Montoya and EGR could have won.

M. Lapin, my point is that whilst Montoya might well have been capable of winning these races, the #42 team certainly wasn't. The 2012 season will provide an even starker example of a driver-that-can in a team-that-can't once Busch Senior (one of the top ten drivers in my opinion) sets forth in the #51.

I don't know why JGR didn't dump Logano for either Montoya or Kurt Busch. JGR seem to have a knack of recruiting young drivers with a stunning record in lesser formulae (Logano, J.J. Yeley) who simply can't cut it once elevated to the senior series.

[Jacques Rabbit]

I agree you need a solid car, and I also agree that EGR did not perform at the level they had in the past few years.

At the same time, even when EGR was a good team, Montoya was not winning races.

And there are many ways to win a race. It's not always who had the best car all day. You just need to have the car to be in the position to make some type of move, and Montoya and McMurray both had top ten runs (or better...could have won any of the Daytona/Talladega races had things played out differently) squandered by errors last year. With the right strategy, you never know what would have happened.

In the interest of not repeating myself over and over, we'll agree to disagree. I'm just not convinced that even in good equipment that Montoya knows how to lead his team to a race victory on an oval.

[Paradise City]

Not that his record is interstellar or anything but McMurray has knocked in a few wins. He's reputed to have a very strong work ethic compared to Montoya and has to earn his bread more and is regarded with less reverence within the team than his teammate. The team is going to have to be a bit harder on Montoya if he wants to add a few more wins to his record.

[Clive Brown]

Hmmm.... I'm not sure that EGR ever was a good organisation. What might JPM have achieved had he moved to Evernham from Chip Ganassi Racing, when Evernham really was the leading Dodge organisation?

But then again, what might he have achieved in the #88 team, another great seat blocked by a journeyman of questionable talent?

In my view, the great teams within the quality organisations can struggle for most of a race, but come good towards the end of a race, and really hit the spot with adjustments at the last stop. This is the real strength of Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus at the #48 team, and the real weakness of Juan Pablo Montoya and Bozo the Clown, whoever he might be, at the#42 team. They seem to start with a great car, and gradually tune out its competitiveness.

[Knowlesy]

Well he should have won the Brickyard twice over, so he can certainly win an oval and I am sure he will.

But god, his attitude at times the last two seasons has not been good. Like he doesn't care sometimes. A competitive car would relight the fire though, I am certain of that, and it must be hard to see how far they have fallen since '09 and '10 and maintain motivation at times. It's a long old season if things aren't going your way...

[Cynic]

He's not going to win anything unless his luck improves. That's twice in two consecutive races he's been taken out in someone else's wreck (to add to at least four occurences last season). Who wants to put money on him completing the hat-trick on Sunday?