Montoya Looks Like a Contender with Another Strong Finish

Juan Pablo Montoya boosted his Chase chances with a second-place run at Pocono.

Juan Pablo Montoya, could easily be riding a two-win streak -- on an oval and a triangular track, no less -- into his strongest suit, road racing, this week.

In other words, Montoya could be the hottest driver in NASCAR.

Had he not been bumped up the racetrack by Kasey Kahne on the final restart, Montoya might well have won the Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono on Monday. And that of course came right on top of the pit-road speeding penalty that snuffed his domination at Indianapolis on July 27.

So as it is, Montoya settled for second to Denny Hamlin at Pocono and is still looking for his first win of the season heading to Watkins Glen, N.Y., this weekend.

Yet he's exactly where he wants to be -- on a tear toward making the Chase, eighth in points, 169 ahead of the current odd man out, 13th-place Kyle Busch.

"Ifs and buts out," Montoya told reporters at Pocono, shrugging off the two near misses, "my goal is making the Chase."

Of the momentum he is building without quite the results to show for it, "I think we got fast race cars," he said of his branch of the otherwise-struggling Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing team. He and crew chief Brian Pattie are "just starting to push more the envelope with everything we do.

"I think if we make it [the Chase], we might have a shot at this."

A shot, he meant, at the Cup, and becoming the first foreign-born driver ever to win it.

Going to the Glen this weekend certainly doesn't hurt the playoff chances of the former Formula One star from Colombia.

"I know we can probably win the race," he said, "but if we can get a top-5 out of there, the points for the Chase would be huge."

At Pocono, Montoya and Kahne started in the second row of the final double-file restart, with Hamlin sixth. But Hamlin shot to second, and set sail after then-leader Clint Bowyer, after Kahne was pushed into Montoya going into the corner, sending Montoya's car skating up the track.

"It's good Juan Pablo is one of the best drivers, or he would have been wrecked," said Kahne, who went to Montoya to apologize afterward.

"I get pushed on restarts because my car isn't as fast," Kahne explained. "So I got pushed on it, and I missed the corner and drilled him. Most guys would have wrecked right there, but the 42 kept going."

"Actually it came out pretty good," Montoya cracked, drawing laughter from the media corps.

He didn't win, but he didn't wreck, and he's well on his way to the Chase.

Team notes: Drivers on track for New Hampshire visit

NASCAR team reports as the Sprint Cup Series makes its first stop of the season at New Hampshire Motor Speedway:

Tony Stewart, No. 14 Chevrolet, Stewart-Haas Racing

This week: Stewart's points lead has increased to 84 as the Cup series heads to New Hampshire for the first of two races this season. Stewart has two wins, 10 top-five finishes and 12 top-10s in 20 starts at the "Magic Mile." He was 13th last June and eighth in September.

Last week: Stewart finished second to Kasey Kahne in the season's first road-course race, the Toyota/SaveMart 350 at Infineon Raceway.

Etc.: Stewart owes much of his Cup success to his father, Nelson, who raced late model stock cars across northern Indiana when he was in his 20s. At the age of 44, Nelson's focus changed. He sold his SCCA D-Production car in favor of a go-kart for his 7-year-old son. In addition to the go-kart, Nelson gave Tony all of the traits that separate a good driver from a good racer. "He never let me settle for second," said Tony Stewart, now in his 29th year of competitive racing. "He didn't like it when we ran second, and he knew that I didn't like it when we ran second. If he saw that I wasn't giving 100%, then he was on me pretty hard about it. He pushed me to be better. He never pressured me to be the best race-car driver in the world, but he did want me to be the best race-car driver that I could be. He never compared me to anybody else. He expected that what I could do was what I could do. He never said that because this guy over here could do something, that I should be able to do it, too. He pushed me hard, but he was fair about it. That's probably why you see so much fire in me today, because he always wanted me to be the best that I could be." ... As a 37-year-old, when Tony Stewart made the massive leap from being just a driver to taking on the dual role of driver/owner with his own team — Stewart-Haas Racing — Nelson has been there to see his son succeed once again. "At the time he won the first Brickyard, I thought, 'This has got to be the biggest thing we've been involved with or ever seen,' " said Nelson, who watched Tony win his first Allstate 400 at the Brickyard in 2005 and his second in 2007. "But, knowing what it took to get to this point in this deal and seeing him win a race, I'm not going to say I'm putting it above the first Brickyard, but it's right up there with the first Brickyard. Tony is having fun. I guess it's a different side of him than everybody thought he had. It's been there all along. Right now, everything's just going really, really well and things are falling in place and he's got all good people and everybody's having fun. That's the most important thing is that everybody's having fun. With fun comes success."