Tag: Juan Pablo Montoya

As far as we can tell, Tony Stewart is at his best when he has a bit of a temper behind him.

Not always. Stewart can be a pleasant fellow with a witty sense of humor. Observations, however, often reveal his “race face” is no-nonsense and when he is stewing over something he, as often, puts that same simmer into focus.

He just won at Dover which ended a fairly long winless streak. Yes, circumstances set in motion near the end of the race played into it as Jimmie Johnson was called to roll down pit road after a jumped restart. With that, Stewart and Juan Pablo Montoya were left to race it out.

Before the race, Stewart seemed short, almost dismissive, for pre-race discussion or interviews. Afterwards, following checkered flags, burnouts, and a side-by-side with the “Monster”, Stewart was even more “Stewartly” with the media. (more…)

Racing is NOW. The options play it on the moment. There is no “what if” and hindsight is only useful, possibly, for taking knowledge to the next track.

Richmond and the Toyota Owners 400 offered up a perfect scenario as an example. The race also, for anyone willing to listen, threw a lug nut at the “rednecks turning left” stereotype.

Second point first. Too often, people who do not follow racing actually turn an eye of disdain towards the sport in general. It’s a bunch of rednecks, crashing around, turning left after left, stupid, cheap beer and fat and loud.

Not so much. Granted, there are a few out in the stands that may loosely fit the mold. The rest of us give them a nod and wave and a “have a good time”…

On the track, the race plays out as a result of engineering, technology and planning. The people involved in building, maintaining and driving these cars are quite intelligent and often could be very successful with any venture. However, they work for a race team so that is supposed to make them, somehow, less than employees of some other technology business. No.

Beyond any of the engineering and hi-tech construction, there is a chess match being played out at speed on the track every second of every lap. The game of chess is assigned as a “smart” person’s game. How “smart” do you need to be to play chess when the pieces are moving at 100-200 miles per hour?

Pretty damn smart.

Now for the first point concerning the Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond and the “now” factor… (more…)

Montoya.

There is no doubt he can drive and go fast. The third checkered flag for Montoya and Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates is certainly a show of driving force. The 01 Telmex BMW-Riley Daytona Prototype held strong throughout the Grand-Am/ROLEX 24 to take the win.

rlx24_01bmw_inside1It wasn’t just the efforts of Juan Pablo Montoya, behind the wheel for the checkered flag, as the 01 regular drivers Memo Rojas and Scott Pruett along with IndyCar driver Charlie Kimball kept the car on or near the point. The team in the garage kept the car smooth in and out of the pits even as the other Ganassi team suffered through issues that eventually removed the 02 from the field.

There was a strong field to contend with. Dario Franchitti and Ryan Hunter-Reay were challenging from IndyCar. Marcos Ambrose, A.J. Allmendinger and Jamie McMurray were in the seats from NASCAR. Guest drivers from the hottest series were all their to sit in with Grand-Am regulars to get the American racing season started.

However, it was Ganassi and the 01 team with Montoya in for the final laps to take them to the win… again. (more…)

NASCAR fans should have had plenty to be excited about at the road course for the Toyota/Save Mart 350 as there were spins, passes and plenty of challenges. For the end of the day at Sonoma Clint Bowyer managed his first win of the season and a first in 2012 for Michael Waltrip Racing.

However, the race also brings forth a few issues to toss around.

First and foremost is the idea of NASCAR on a road course in the first place. Many fans don’t seem to like it. We don’t understand that. This type of course offers a variety of terrain and therefore a variety of challenges to racing. It would certainly follow that those challenges would make for a more exciting race. Granted, the big oval speeds are not there but if all you want is speed then flip on NHRA for a few seconds and you’ll see 300+ mph.

As for the diehard traditionalists that want to insist stock cars turn left and anything else is blasphemous we would say to get over it. This is the same bunch that cried when Toyota entered NASCAR. This is the same bunch that chided the “Car of Tomorrow”. They still boo Jeff Gordon because of some perception that goes back to the #3 and Dale Earnhardt. (more…)

The only thing missing from the Monday night Daytona 500 was James Taylor and Tom Cruise. We already have the Three Stooges as Grand Marshals..

However, as a movie drama the editing was botched. The lap 2 crash should have been put off till much later. Why would you cast a record champion, a rookie winner and an antagonist woman and have them out in just the second lap…? That doesn’t make hay for a good story.

But wait…! We get a fire explosion in the last quarter of the film! On top of that we get the most popular star into an “almost win” scenario at the finish!

What…!?

“And then… we flash forward from Victory Lane to the end of the season and the Earth implodes in December as the fire damaged pavement cracks open causing a world-wide chain reaction with John Cusack in a small plane…”

“Can we get George Clooney…?”

The Daytona 500 was hardly the start of the Sprint Cup season that NASCAR wanted. There was just too much drama leading up to the actual race and too much “weird” in the race itself. Rain stayed over Daytona setting the scene for a first ever prime time night event. It was a poorly written script as a movie which makes it comical as reality. We should have guessed when we saw Darrell Waltrip talking with the Three Stooges… (more…)