NASCAR (SONOMA) - Juan Pablo Montoya Teleconference
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Welcome to Infineon Raceway for the upcoming Toyota/Save Mart 350. We are joined by Juan Pablo Montoya, driver of the No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge for Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates. Juan enters the weekend 23rd in NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series points. He won his first and only NASCAR race in Mexico City earlier this year in the Busch Series. He's best known for competing in Formula One from 2001-2006, where he posted seven wins. He's also the 1999 CART Champion and the 2000 Indy 500 winner.
Earlier this year, you posted a Busch Series victory in Mexico. I imagine this track and Watkins Glen are ones you're looking forward to. Can you talk a little about your expectations for this weekend?
JPM: It's hard to know. My background in racing has always been road courses, so a lot of people are expecting great things. But you have to remember that there are a bunch of really good guys here as well, like Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart, who have road course experience, as well, and they have been racing for so many years here. I probably have more experience on road courses than anybody, and that should play into our hands. The main focus is get a good result. If we can get a good result, I'll be really happy. I did a three-day driving school here before I started racing cars, actually. Skip Barber was here in September of 1992, I believe.
You talked about briefly being on this course, but I believe your teammates have only been here once. How do you prepare for a course you haven't tested?
JPM: You know, all year has been like that for me. The ovals, in a way, are simpler because there are only four corners, but there is a lot of technique and so many different race lines. On a road course, there's only one race line. With my background it should be easy. In Mexico, it was the same thing, but within five-10 laps I was on the pace, and in Formula One I picked it up pretty good, so I'm hoping it shouldn't be so bad. The better question is how competitive the car is going to be. I've talked to some drivers to get hints as to what to do and where to go. The main thing that bothers you is where do you brake. When I know the track, I brake around here and then I brake there knowing that you're going to make the corner, no problem. When you've never done it, you always are extremely cautious because you start 100 yards before where you're going to start braking. The last thing you want to do is miss a braking point and wreck the whole car. The problem is that by the time you get to the race track during practice, do a few laps and check the car, you only get 10 laps and it's straight to qualifying. If I get really comfortable and the car is good, we should do pretty good in qualifying and by Sunday we should be really good.
Can you tell me a little about your experience of racing in Mexico, and a little about your golf game?
JPM: Mexico was a good experience. In a way, it put a lot of pressure on myself for here. It was great to get my first NASCAR Busch win there, but after what I did there they think I'm going to come here and blow them away. We'll probably do good, but I'd be very surprised if we just go out and blow them away. It'd be nice, I'd take it for sure, but I don't think it'll be that simple. The golf game is good, I've been playing a lot. I'm playing today and tomorrow and Saturday.
How old were you when you first starting racing on road courses?
JPM: Five. The first time I drove on an oval was 1999 when I started driving with Chip [Ganassi] in Champ Car. The only time I've raced on ovals is in the States. When I came to NASCAR, I had 20 races on ovals and the rest of my life was on road courses, so road courses are natural for me. Going left and right and braking and stuff. I was very happy when we went to Mexico and we fell back, and they said one of the things Ganassi always struggled with was when they fell back they couldn't get back to the front, but I was able to do that. I'm hoping even if we have a problem, we should be able to get a good result. De we have a chance to win here? Yes. Will we? I don't know. Road course races are long and anything can happen. It's the first time for the COT on a road course. We've done testing, but we haven't done as much as Hendrick. I had one day of testing because we had one car and Hendrick had five cars. How do you compete against that? Hopefully my knowledge of road course should come into play.
Why do you think you're such a great road course driver?
JPM: It's because I've always done that. I think on ovals I'm just starting to get the hang of it and when I get comfortable in the car, I'm competitive. Last weekend, the car was a handful all weekend and when the car is a handful, you're going to look bad, especially when I'm not that comfortable. I'm not that comfortable in the car yet that I can just ride it out. I'm not used to that. Doing 200 mph next to the wall, I'm not looking forward to hitting the wall, you know what I mean? With a road course, I'm used to that. Using curbs and braking and using the throttle, shifting, that's what I'm used to. I did 14 years of go-karts and then I went to cars. I did a racing school, raced for a year in Colombia, then went to Barber Saub and then went to Europe. When I went to Formula One, every track was a new race track and you didn't have a lot of time to practice, but I did pretty good on the pace.
What has been your biggest challenge as part of the NASCAR learning curve?
JPM: The hardest thing, not only for me but for the team, has been the COT. It has been a tough program for us. We thought we'd do a lot better. We did a lot of testing and we did our homework, but it kind of surprised us when we just sucked.
What do you expect to be the most difficult thing about learning Infineon Raceway?
JPM: Everybody says it's very easy to overdrive, but I don't think that will be too bad for me. The hard thing about it is, realistically, before qualifying we don't have a lot of laps. The biggest concern is that if you don't start at the front, and you have a fast car, you want to take your time and you don't want to get into a fight with anybody. On an oval, you can fight for a position for five laps, side by side. With a road course it comes down to a single corner. You commit yourself to it and you do it, and that's it. If the other guy doesn't give you enough room, and you're already committed, you can't slow down enough to avoid the guy, so you touch. If the guy sees you again, is he going to counter attack because you tried to push him off? And that happens. How many times did Scott Pruett spin here last year? Four times? I think because I'm a full-time driver, I should think people will have some respect and I respect the other drivers. The question is how good the car is going to be, and I think it should be pretty good. In Mexico we had really good cars. We tested at VIR and it was hard to know how good you were or how bad you were because everybody was on a different tire. We used the same tire as Joe Gibbs and I nearly ran off in one of the corners, but I went nearly as fast as they did. So, I think I don't suck as bad as I thought. That's the hard thing. I've done road courses my whole life, and sometimes I think I'm two-seconds off the pace, and I'm thinking that you put anybody in this car and they won't go a tenth faster than me. I'm driving the wheels off this car and I'm two-seconds off the pace.
Coming here with the COT will determine how good we are. If somebody did more homework than us, and they probably did, and they found something tricky in how to run the suspension and stuff, then we might be in trouble. Because if their car is half a second quicker than me, you can improvise half a second for a lap or two, but not for 110 laps.
When you entered NASCAR you were receiving a lot of advice from other drivers, is it still the same?
JPM: Yes, it's actually been really good. I've been really surprised, whenever I have a question or a doubt, I know that I can go and ask. But I try not to abuse that and go to everybody to ask 'What do I do here?' I did ask Casey Mears if he could help me a little bit when we come here and tell me what to do and what gears to use. He's driven a Ganassi car, so he knows what to expect more than anybody else.
Ricky Rudd says that no one is as good as you at passing going into a corner. Could you talk about how that might be different in a NASCAR versus a Formula One car.
JPN: Braking distance in a NASCAR is a lot longer. The great thing in a NASCAR is that 100 yards from a corner, and you already knew that you screwed up. That's a really bad sensation. Normally you break 300 yards from the corner and halfway through the braking you know you already missed the corner. It's all about modulating the brake pedal. To pass, it's not how much later and harder you break, it's how fast or slow you decelerate the car through the braking. You don't need to clear the guy when you get to the braking area, you just need to get to his side.
Is that something you're confident you can do here, or will you have to learn?
JPM: The key for me here is watch and learn. You know, everybody says passing here, you've got to pass here into the last corner, but to pass in the last corner, you have to set it up the corner before. And to set them up the corner before, you've got to be good through the esses. Once you learn how to set them up, it's a matter of how deep I can brake. That's why I say guys with experience, they have it easy. Jeff Gordon has been coming here for 14 years, to the same race track, so he knows exactly what curbs he wants to use and he knows every little nitch and trick there is here. For me, I know I need to turn left and right and see where we stand. We should be pretty good with my road course experience. I was telling some friends that I'm in a lose-lose situation here. The only way to come out of here good is winning. But if I don't win, even if I came out of here in second, we failed, even though it will be good for the championship. There's a lot more ways to get out of here that are bad or better. I'm looking at the big picture - the championship and the points. The last two races have been pretty tough for us. If we have a chance of winning, I'm definitely going to go for it. But if we're not fast enough for some reason, we still need to learn why we're not fast enough and what we need to improve and earn enough points and take advantage of this.
You're more confident on a road course, but you say you haven't been confident with the COT, how will you balance that this weekend?
JPM: No idea. You know, we tested on the road course. We tested last year twice - two days in road Atlanta, and they said we were really fast, and one day in VIR. I've done three days of a COT on a road course since I joined NASCAR and it hasn't been that bad. The car felt pretty decent when we tested it. The question is, sometimes it feels good, but it doesn't mean it's fast enough. It doesn't matter how good or bad it feels, it's how fast the car really runs. For example, Hendrick hired Max Papis to do a lot of testing because they want to dominate here like they've done here every year. If they found something that nobody else is running, it's going to be very hard to beat them. But, if they run what we think they're going to run and we're running the same thing that's the best we can run, we should be competitive and we should have a shot at winning.
Is there anything in particular that you miss about racing in Formula One?
JPM: Off the track, nothing. On the track, just driving the cars was a lot of fun. There is nothing like driving a Formula One car, but there's nothing like racing a NASCAR. Does Formula One handle 100 times better than a NASCAR? Yes, it does. Does it have more technology? Yes. Everybody knows that. It's not a secret. But is racing a NASCAR 100 times better than racing an F1 car? Yes.
Why?
JPM: Because in Formula One, there's no racing. You go out and normally the guy that qualified in front of you has a faster car, and the guy behind you has a slower car. You go out and run 90% of the time, unless something happens or you're lucky or something and have a good start, because you don't have anything to do with the starts either. Then you just get on with your business, do your pit stops and go home. The most exciting part of Formula One is pit stops, because somebody will maybe go a little longer to try to beat you. But if you call beating someone in the pits racing, I think you're in the wrong business. Racing is when you overtake someone on the track and race somebody and you don't see that like you see it NASCAR, anywhere. In NASCAR, we go from restrictor plate racing, where you're four wide and bumping each other on the track, which is really cool, to learning to run close to the guy in front that is going to make him loose so you can get a run on the guy. You've just got to run fast enough to get your bumper into his bumper so you can squeeze him and he gets a tighter exit and you get the momentum and you clear him. There are so many things that you never believe racing could do and just something that NASCAR has that no one else has. Normally, the car behind is the only car that gets effected. In NASCAR, the car in front gets affected, as well. If you get your bumper really close, that car gets really loose.
What do you think about Lewis Hamilton and what he's been able to do the last few weeks?
JPM: Do I need to comment on it? The kid has a lot of talent, but I don't even want to comment, to be honest. It's good for him. I think he's done a good deal for himself, and I think that's the result of Formula One. He's a lot more comfortable than Alonso in the car, and I heard Alonso was complaining that they were giving Lewis better stuff than him, but I haven't talked to anyone so I don't really know. The have the fastest car, so you do a better job, you win the race. You do a worse job, you finish second.
Can you talk a little bit about the incident in Mexico with Scott Pruett, and have you guys patched things up?
JPM: Yeah. Scott was angry at the time, but when he looked at the video and we talked, there was no problem, really. That's what it was. It was actually good because we got good press out of that. I've got to thank you guys for that. The sponsors were happy.
Do you think because of that incident, that other NASCAR drivers will be cautious of you this weekend?
JPM: Hopefully if I'm on someone's bumper, I'm not there very long. We're racing like I would race every week. When I spun JJ Yeley last year in my first Busch race, I just passed him like I knew how to pass. We got to the braking point and I went inside of him, braked later than him and I was there, but by the time I was there, the spotter never expected me to get there and he turned and I spun him. He told me "that's not how you pass in NASCAR." In NASCAR, you make him come up the corner and the guy gives you room, but that was the way I normally race. You don't pass him in the corner, you beat him into the corner here.
There have been many road racing specialists at Infineon Raceway before, including Boris Said and Ron Fellows. How much of the whole package is a driver like yourself with road course experience, the car and the knowledge of the race track?
JPM: It's hard to say what percentages. I'd say the car has about 30% impact, the driver can be maybe 40% and then the smaller percentage is the knowledge of the race track. By the time the race comes, you know every bit there is.
You were talking about spinning JJ, saying that's not how you pass in NASCAR, have you...
JPM: Today I wouldn't do it - now I think it would be a stupid move to do now that I've been here for a year. In a small oval it wasn't so bad, but if you tried to do that in Michigan, it's 100% a wreck. On a road course, that's the way you pass people. In an oval, it's all about keeping momentum and getting a little more momentum off the corner than the other guy and getting outside and inside. In road courses, you want to get a better run off the corner, but you want to get a better run off the corner so you can out brake the guy. Since the race line is so much more narrow there's no outside or inside. You want to make sure you get to the inside of the corners because by the time the guy has gone to the outside, he has no chance.
What do you remember about going from 19th to first in Mexico?
JPM: I couldn't believe we actually did it. They said I made it look so easy, but I really passed 90-percent of the guys on the restarts. I was lucky we had a lot of yellows. I'd our brake them into Turn 1 and a couple of guys into the last corner. You'd get a little bit more momentum or go a little deeper, once you're racing side by side with somebody it doesn't matter how fast or slow you are into the corner. The secret is, it's just how deep you can go in without making a mistake.