Maybe it's because he's an outsider. Maybe it's because he's more aggressive than resident "bad boy" Kyle Busch. Maybe it's because drivers new to the sport aren't supposed to be this good this fast. Maybe it's because his English doesn't have a Southern drawl to it. Maybe it's because he's foreign. Maybe it's because he's an arrogant Formula One driver like Sacha Baron Cohen in "Talladega Nights".
Whatever the reason, NASCAR does not like Juan Pablo Montoya. The fans don't like him, some of the drivers don't (though they respect his prodigious talent), and the league suits really don't. I was on vacation in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana during the Brickyard 400 (don't even try to get me to call it the Allstate 400), and was listening on the radio on the way back from White Castle when Montoya, who was leading the race by 5.5 seconds -- no, really -- was called for a drive-thru penalty because he sped through pit lane during his last pit stop.
By .07 miles per hour.
That's right, supposedly he was going 60.06 in a 59.99 zone according to NASCAR's computers. Never mind that he had dominated the race, similar to his trip around the Brickyard when he won the Indianapolis 500 in 2000. Never mind that his warning light, which is designed to tell a driver when he's going too fast in the pits, never came on. Never mind that his crew claimed they got no reading that his car was going too fast.
NASCAR called him for speeding, and that was that.
The second it happened, I turned to Big Brother, who was riding shotgun and said, "that's bullcrap and you know it." He laughed, knowing that I'm an open-wheel fan who roots for Montoya to do well to show the arrogant Southerners that their cars aren't some mystery that open-wheel drivers are unable to solve. Let's just say that if you put Dale Earnhardt, Jr. in an IndyCar, he wouldn't be nearly as fast as Sam Hornish, Jr. in a stock car...relatively speaking, of course.
To make things worse, NASCAR did it again to Montoya in yesterday's race at Pocono. On the double-file restart, Kasey Kahne was "pushed from behind" in his words and ran Montoya right up the track, almost into the wall. Kahne himself said that Montoya was one of the only drivers in NASCAR who could've kept that car from crashing. The culprit for this "push"? Denny Hamlin, the eventual race winner, who blasted past David Reutimann earlier, causing Reutimann to spin and collect Marcos Ambrose in the process. When that happened, my dad sent me a text at work to say, "Hamlin is out of control; NASCAR needs to park him". Interesting, a guy is going .07 over the speed limit in the pits and you bring him in, yet you allow a madman to drive around the track pushing cars out of his way. Hamlin's push allowed him to slide underneath Kahne, Hornish, and Montoya, giving him a lead he wouldn't relinquish in the last ten or so laps.
Nice job, NASCAR.
The funny part of it all? Juan Pablo Montoya is still 8th in the Chase standings, with a road course coming up next, where he excels since he actually knows how to turn right, too. Basically, Montoya is a virtual lock for the Chase, and will be causing plenty of headaches for the front-runners for the final 10 races of the year that determine the championship.
Actually, forget that I said that. If NASCAR has their way, they'll sneak Kyle Busch into the Top 12 and leave Montoya standing on the sidelines. Is it possible to finish .07 points behind someone in the standings?
~~ Lank
2 comments:
nascar has been picking winners for forty years. Having said that what Lank didn't point out was that the actual pit road speed limit was 55 mph. There was absolutely no need for JPM to being that close to the limit. He was riding a rocket and he had a five-and-a-half second lead, time to take a pee break in nascar terms.
If he is going to do any damage in the chase (yes, he will comfortably get to participate in that contrived, p/c playoff) he must exercise good judgment as well as his extraordinary talent.
As Juan Manuel Fangio (a pretty fair driver most gen y'er's never heard of) once said, "The purpose is to win the race at the slowest possible speed." Especially on pit road.
Bill,
The speed limit was indeed 55 mph, but NASCAR gives the drivers a 4.99 mph cushion, bringing the actual penalized speed to anything above 59.99. Plus, he couldn't coast through at 35 mph, because that increases the risk of someone gaining on him and him losing more time once he gets stuck in the traffic that will inevitably be out there.
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