NASCAR misses Juan Pablo Montoya, but JPM doesn’t miss NASCAR – Sporting News

CONCORD, N.C. — Juan Pablo Montoya was one of NASCAR’s most annoying drivers.

He annoyed fans. He annoyed NASCAR. He sometimes annoyed the media. He even annoyed his own teammates. And he particularly annoyed other drivers.

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Which was highly entertaining. Like the time he went helmet-to-helmet with Kevin Harvick after they wrecked each other at Watkins Glen. Or when he squabbled with Tony Stewart. Or openly feuded with teammate Jamie McMurray. Or reportedly traded punches with Ryan Newman in the NASCAR hauler.

Montoya was not well liked by much anyone. But that was OK with him. He was only here to race. And win. Not to make friends.

Two out of three ain’t bad.

Montoya, 40, never won big in NASCAR, but he’s winning now. Winning and contending for championships in IndyCar racing for Roger Penske, a championship car owner in America’s two largest forms of motorsports. He’s the defending champion at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and will be a favorite to win it a third time in Sunday’s 100th Indy 500.

Montoya is back on top of the motorsports world after a tumultuous seven-year stretch in NASCAR, where he stirred up considerable trouble in exchange for just two Cup victories. His stock-car career was mostly a disappointment with one Chase appearance and more crashes than top-five finishes in most seasons.

During his final two years, Montoya’s highlights were a victory that got away because of a controversial caution flag at Richmond and the incident Montoya will never live down — the spectacular explosion and fire that highlighted the bizarre 2012 Daytona 500 when he crashed into a jet dryer.

Though Montoya’s stock-car career went up in flames, he is sorely missed in NASCAR. If he were sipping Coca-Cola at Charlotte on Sunday instead of dreaming of milk in Indianapolis, Sprint Cup would be even more compelling.

Montoya, for all his faults, kept things interesting. Today, only Tony Stewart has the brass to challenge the status quo. NASCAR seems to have throttled all the others. And except for an occasional bump (usually by Gibbs teammates), few drivers seem willing or bold enough to mix it up on the track. Though NASCAR’s new aero rules sparked better racing and more contact, few have dared to test the limit. NASCAR seems to have squashed overly aggressive, physical racing when it suspended Matt Kenseth for two races last year for taking out Joey Logano.

NASCAR needs drama, it needs characters and yes, it even needs a bit of controversy. Montoya would stir things up, racing right up to NASCAR’s proverbial line and threatening to cross it. The sport could use that kind of spunk and devil-may-care attitude.

Though Montoya ruffled feathers and got under people’s skin, he had the edge and ornery personality that fans like and rivals respect. Drivers knew to give him a wide berth or stay out of his way — as Newman and others learned. He was probably the most intimidating driver in NASCAR history with only two wins.

Montoya often drove over his head, trying to get more out of his car than was there, but everyone respected his talent. The general consensus after he left was that he would have won more races and been a greater threat had he been blessed with faster cars and a more successful team. Since he left, Chip Ganassi Racing hasn’t won a points race in three years with the talented Kyle Larson. McMurray has only an all-star race victory since then.

As race fans prepare for the biggest day in American motorsports, the most interesting driver to watch will share the spotlight in Indy, where he has a chance to become just the 11th driver to win the Indianapolis 500 three or more times, joining the elite company of A.J. Foyt, Rick Mears, Al Unser Sr., Helio Castroneves and Dario Franchitti. As the racing world focuses on Monaco, Indy and then Charlotte, Montoya is the only driver who has competed in each of the three big races — and won two of them.

But what NASCAR misses most about Montoya are the things that were, at times, most annoying.

He arrived in NASCAR to tremendous hype. Having won 10 Indy-style races at the time, including the 2000 Indy 500, and seven Formula 1 events, he was an international star and regarded as one of the world’s greatest racers. He was expected to win and contend in NASCAR, despite the poor track record of IndyCar drivers trying to make it in stock cars. The hype and high expectations rubbed many fans the wrong way, causing them to resent Montoya, much the way they do the popular Danica Patrick now.

As Montoya discovered that driving heavy, hard-to-handle stock cars is no easy task, fans reveled in his struggles while frustration mounted for him and Ganassi.

But Montoya, one of racing’s most tenacious drivers, continued to be aggressive and didn’t back down from anyone, which often came off as a sign of disrespect, along with causing more than his share of wrecks. And he didn’t appear to care, refusing to change his hard-charging style. That didn’t go over well in the grandstands or the garage. The reaction was nothing new for Montoya, who had a rocky relationship with competitors and fans in Formula 1 as well.

“I always had the reputation of being the bad guy,” Montoya told USA Today in 2011. “I don’t like being the bad guy, but I hate taking (crap) from people. If that’s being the bad guy, then I’m the bad guy.”

He also didn’t go out of his way to make friends in the garage, sticking firm to his belief that friends turn into enemies on the racetrack. And though he was often colorful and entertaining, the moody Montoya didn’t do much to endear himself to the media and fans, either.

“Am I the most social guy? No, I’m not social at all,” he told USA Today. “When you run open wheel, it’s about yourself. In open wheel, you don’t share the road with anybody.”

Though Montoya seems to have chilled a bit since returning to IndyCar, he still pulls no punches. He called IndyCar’s aero rules at Fontana last year “insane” and hasn’t curbed his blunt, abrupt approach.

He’s “very blunt. Doesn’t screw about,” Penske teammate Will Power told Sports Illustrated.

Brian Campe, Montoya’s race engineer and former NASCAR crewman, calls him “unfiltered” and “brash.”

But the one thing Montoya did learn in NASCAR is patience.

After two rough first seasons, which featured a lone win on the road course at Sonoma and just four more top-five finishes, Montoya settled down in 2009 and made the Chase with 18 top-10s. Though he struggled over the next four seasons, he learned what it takes to succeed in NASCAR. He just didn’t have the car or team to show it.

Montoya had to learn patience both on and off the track. And he showed it in his first season with Penske, and in winning last year’s Indy 500.

He had to pit twice before Lap 10 last year because of an early crash and then ran over his air hose on another pit stop, falling to 30th on the track. But he charged from the rear of the field to take the lead and hold off Power, his Penske teammate, for one of the biggest victories of his career.

“To be honest with you, I think the biggest difference was just patience,” Montoya said at Indianapolis Motor Speedway last week. “I think, to be honest, the years I had in NASCAR, when you do so many 500-mile races, you realize it doesn’t matter where you start. Its just work on the car, make it good, and if you have a good car, you just take it one by one.”

Montoya has maintained his aggressive approach, but has enough experience and confidence in open-wheel cars to know when to force the issue and when not to — a lesson he struggled to learn in NASCAR.

“This race is all about, you never know whether the move you make is the right one or the wrong one. You’ve just got to make a decision whether you do it or you don’t,” he said.

Power, the 2014 open-wheel champion who has never won the Indy 500, marveled at Montoya’s charge through the field and his superb driving at the end of 2015 race.

“Juan went to the back early on, so those guys put more downforce on and … I couldn’t pass him on the last lap,” Power said. “(It was) either hit the wall or lift. So I lifted because I was going to hit the wall.

“Juan, once he got past (Scott) Dixon, cruised by me and I kind of lost some ground there. But actually I was thinking coming on to the last lap, I’m in the best spot here, I can get a run on him. But he did a really good job of taking the air and making sure that I had push, you know, which was really smart.”

Simon Pagenaud, who has won three of the first five IndyCar races this season, credits his veteran teammates with his hot start in his second season with Penske. Even Montoya, who didn’t get along with McMurray, his NASCAR teammate at Ganassi.

“I feel like I’ve improved massively because of them just basically being open books to me, showing me how to do it,” Pagenaud said. “I always joke with Montoya, he starts last, wins the race. So why do you even bother qualifying, you know? (Laughter)

“Things like that, it’s incredible to see when he’s able to turn things around.”

Montoya makes no bones about the fact that he doesn’t miss NASCAR.

“Not really,” he told reporters this week in Charlotte. NASCAR, he said, is about “the show.”

“Indy doesn’t want to ruin a guy’s race with a caution,” Montoya said, according to the Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record. “NASCAR will ruin a guy’s race just to keep it close. It happened to me. You don’t want to lose a race because there’s a water bottle in the parking lot.”

That’s Montoya, always blunt, always testing boundaries, always pushing the limit.

That’s why he’s back at the top of the racing hierarchy. And why he’s missed in NASCAR.