Juan Pablo Montoya focused on performance, making Chase instead of contract talks

Juan Pablo Montoya focused on performance, making Chase instead of contract talks

SONOMA, CALIF. – Juan Pablo Montoya says he and team co-owner Chip Ganassi are “close” regarding contract talks for 2012, but his focus this weekend is on getting his No. 42 team back into the winner’s circle.

“We’re pretty close,” Montoya said when asked about his contract, which is up after this season. “I think we’re pretty close, yeah. We’ll see. When it’s ready, you will know.”

Montoya said he expects to return to the Earnhardt Ganassi Racing operation next season. He heads into this weekend’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway as one of the favorites with both his career Cup wins coming on road courses – here in 2007 and at Watkins Glen last season.

He is currently 15th in points, 46 out of one of the top-10 qualifying spots for the Chase For The Sprint Cup. The remaining two spots will go to the drivers between 11th and 20th with the most wins.

A win this weekend would make him one of only two drivers currently in position to possibly earn a wild-card spot based on victories, but Montoya says his team can put itself in position to qualify as one of the top-10 in points as well.

Coming on the heels of a 30th-place finish at Michigan a week ago, Montoya stops short of calling this weekend’s race a must-win situation.

“It’s a must-win when it’s good weekend,” he said. “I mean after last weekend, we had a great Pocono (where he finished seventh) and I thought we were getting back on track; last week was hard. It was a shock for us.

“I thought we had a decent race based on practice and just decided to change the car a lot. We had 10th to 15th-place car in practice and we thought we could go better with our normal stuff and we kind of shoot ourselves in the foot there. I think this week, the ... car looks pretty good. We’ll just have to wait and see.

“This is a place I think we are in a really good position to either get a win or run up front at least and get a lot of points. I think we can still make the Chase by being in the top 10. We have a car that is capable of doing that. I think if we make good calls in the next few weeks we should be pretty good. If we get a win here, yeah, I think it would be great. But two really clear chances of victory here or Watkins [Glen], it’s exciting.”

Of the four drivers between himself and 10th place, three – Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Mark Martin – are standout competitors in road-course events as well. Gordon’s nine career wins on road courses is tops for the series while Stewart, with seven, is second. Martin, meanwhile, has four career road-course victories.

Gordon will be a threat, Montoya said, only if the Hendrick driver’s car is capable.

“Last year Jimmie [Johnson, Gordon’s teammate] ran better than him,” Montoya said. “This is one of those places that if you have a good car you can run really well. If you do good in qualifying – most of the time a guy on the pole is a guy that will surprise you and won’t run that well in the race. For us, we’ve just got to make sure we’ve got a good car, get a decent qualifying position and go from there.

“It’s a good place. We got our first win here. We won here and we won at Watkins, both road courses. I think it’s pretty good. We’ve just got to be smart all day and see what happens.”

Fonte: scenedaily.com

Concentrar-se em ficar entre aqueles que disputarão o título realmente é mais importante no momento do que pensar em questões contratuais.

Montoya encontra-se atualmente na 15ª posição na classificação do campeonato, sendo que para disputar o Chase, ele precisar ficar entre os 10.

Beijinhos, Ludy