Top-Five Finish for Montoya and Texaco/Havoline Team
Results from Atlanta Motor Speedway
1. Jimmy Johnson, No.48 Chevrolet
5. Juan Pablo Montoya, No.42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge
9. Reed Sorenson, No.41 Target Dodge
13. David Stremme, No.40 Coors Light Dodge
Top-Five Finish for Montoya and Texaco/Havoline Team
HAMPTON, Ga. (March 18, 2007) --- Juan Pablo Montoya, making only his fifth start on the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup circuit, drove the No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge to a fifth-place finish in Sunday’s race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Montoya scored Rookie of the Race honors for the second-straight week and unofficially took the lead in the rookie standings by one point over David Ragan. He now sits 15th in the overall standings just 28 points out of the top 10.
Montoya and the Texaco/Havoline team started the 325-lap race from the 16th position. Although the car was loose entering the corner and tight through the center at the start of the event, Donnie Wingo and the crew worked on the car and were able to get it working better for Montoya before the midpoint of the race. Montoya restarted the race on lap 147 in the 12th position and was sitting in the top 10 through a round of green-flag pit stops on lap 194.
He was running the very top line of the track, a line very few drivers were attempting, and passing his competitors one-by-one. He was turning the quickest times on the track on lap 208 and passed the No. 8 car on lap 213 to move into the top five. The caution flag waved on lap 222 and Montoya told Wingo the car was just a “little too tight in the middle of the corner.” Wingo told Montoya they wouldn’t make any adjustment because he was the fastest car on the track.
Montoya maneuvered around the No. 07 car on lap 245 to take over fourth and passed the No. 99 car on lap 247 for third. The caution flag waved again on lap 271and Montoya brought the Texaco/Havoline Dodge down pit road. Wingo made a slight air pressure adjustment and the crew performed a routine pit stop. Montoya was fourth for the restart on lap 274. He battled with lapped down cars following the restart and wasn’t able to make any ground up on the front three. When NASCAR threw the caution flag for debris on lap 309, Wingo called him down pit road for fresh tires.
Montoya went on the high side when the green flag dropped on lap 314, but ran out of track and scraped the wall trying to get around the No. 48 car. The brush with the wall caused some damage to the right rear of the Texaco/Havoline car and the No. 31 was able to get around Montoya. Over the final three laps Montoya battled with the No. 07 car to hold onto the fifth position. He crossed the finish line a nose ahead to earn his first-career top-five finish in the NEXTEL Cup Series.
On Saturday, Montoya and his Texaco/Havoline NASCAR Busch Series team earned their second top 10 finish of the season with an eighth-place effort in the Nicorette 300. Montoya leads the Rookie standings in the Busch Series and now sits 10th in the overall driver standings.
CGRFS Driver Quoteboard
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA "I loved the racing at Atlanta. We had a great car today. Everybody did a great job, the pit stops were perfect. My Dodge was amazing. Everybody at Texaco/Havoline, Chip Ganassi, my crew guys, my crew chief, everybody did an amazing job today. It’s nice to get a top-five here. I’m getting the hang of it. I’m running the high line and I’m really comfortable, and I need to learn to run a little more comfortable in the bottom."
"I think this was a good weekend. I think the next ones are going to be pretty hard. We’ve got Bristol, that’s going to be a nightmare. Martinsville will probably be another tough one. Darlington, let’s not even talk about that one. I’m getting comfortable with this one. I need to work on the other ones. We’re going to have up and downs, but when the car’s good and I’m comfortable we’re going to get momentum. I think the second half of the season when we start going to tracks I’ve been to and we run the setups and a little bit of what I need to run, that’s definitely going to help."
About Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates
Following a strong career as a driver, Chip Ganassi created his own one-car IndyCar team in 1990 and established a partnership with a new sponsor, Target Stores. Today, his teams include two IRL IndyCars, two Indy Pro Series cars and along with Felix Sabates he has three cars in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series, a Daytona Prototype in the world of Grand American Rolex Sports Car Series racing and two entries in the NASCAR Busch Series. Ganassi’s IndyCar teams have amassed five Championships and 50 wins since 1994; his NASCAR teams have nine wins and a Rookie-of-the-Year title; and the Grand American team has won two of the last three Rolex Series Daytona Prototype Championships and are the two-time defending Champions of the Rolex 24 At Daytona. Chip Ganassi Racing operates out of state-of-the-art race shop facilities in Indianapolis, Ind., and Concord, N.C., with a corporate office in Pittsburgh, Pa.
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