J.P. Montoya

[lawdog]

I will preface this by saying I didn't see him take out Pruitt, but I did see how fast he was early in the race and I did see the green white checkers just when I got in off the skid steer. I think the dude served some notice today. Watch out for him at the Point and the Glen, he'll be a contender. He still has some developing to do on the ovals, but as I've said before, the guy is a hot shoe! I will bet I will have used him all 9 times in Fantasy beforethe year is over>

[bubs]

If he only waited he would have passed pruett cleanly, but that is hindsight. He just went in the first corner on the inside of pruett just maybe getting to the back tire of pruett when pruett came down. I think he will be very good at both the road courses but it will be tougher to win you will have all the road racers plus the nextel road guru's. They will be fun to watch.

[tipup]

I saw it, I think that it is a hard call to make, it looked like they both had position and they both could have given a little but neither did so i would say that it is both their fults and just boils down to rubbing is racing!!! After all i dont much care for Scott and thought that he was crying a little!!

[eyepatrol]

JP made a number of rather aggressive moves throughout the race that I don't think will bode well in a cup race.

He can drive a roadcourse race, no doubt, but I think it'll be a different story when he runs a cup race instead of Busch.

[VMS]

Tough call on this one..

Pruett looked like he was going to take the turn wide, then turned down into montoya (I would think feeling he had enough room to do so and block the position). Montoya took a shallower line into many corners and didn't brake as hard so he could gain the position.

I don't know...by the time it is all said and done, I'd call it a racing incident. Pruett was trying to block, Montoya tried to take advantage of the inside. either way, Pruett still finisehd in the top 5. A couple more laps and he would have been 2nd...

Steve

[Eric Wettschreck]

Montoya was coming hard. I'd chalk it up as a bit of impatience. He could have checked up and got around another time. Oh well, that's racing.

Having said that, watch out boys. There's definately a new dude in town for road courses. Holy dump he was driving the tires offa that car!!!

[Double D]

I'm with Bubs, if he just would have been a little more patient he no doubt would have passed the guy eventually. Everybody on his team except him felt pretty bad - his crew chief even had tears in his eyes about it on TV.

No doubt the guy can drive, and he will win again. I'm afraid some will always put a mark next to his first win because of the wreck.

DD

[LMITOUT]

It couldn't have been scripted any better....or maybe it was? A Latino winning a race in Mexico City.....hmmm? I'm not saying his car wasn't good or he wasn't driving well, it's just that there sure seemed to be a lot of cautions at the end which helped him close up the gap between himself and the leaders tremendously.

I'm sure the WWE, errrr, I mean NASCAR is happy though and that's all that matters.

[fishonnopeoff]

Hmmm. Are you serious?

[LMITOUT]

Hmmmm...yes I am.

It's no secret that NASCAR throws some suspect caution flags and it was sure convenient again this weekend. It's becoming almost as predictable as a daytime soap. NASCAR's ratings have peaked and are now dropping, so it was a good time to tap the south-of-the-border fanbase with this 'new', popular, ethnic driver. Mission accomplished. Next...

[VMS]

I would agree with some of the cautions being thrown. They very easily could have been locational cautions rather than full track cautions. I don't think that was their reason to get montoya close...he had the car to beat, and even if they had locational cautions, he still would have been up front..

Steve

[JohnMickish]

Lmit, I hear you and I agree with. Some endings are just to perfect, like when Jr. won the next race at Daytona after Sr. was killed there, Terry Labonte winning the last Southern 500 in his last full year, and the king winning his 200th race on the 4th of July with the President of the USA in the stands (that would be Ronald Reagan for those of you not old enough to have been around). Yep, some ending you have to write for them to end that way. Last year a Latino driver would have won the race too if (I believe it was) Kyle Busch hadn't of taken him out.

[fishonnopeoff]

I think.....you all huff paint...yep its rigged. Just like wrestling. I just cant wait till France gets hit with a chair.......

[xedge2002]

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I just cant wait till France gets hit with a chair.......

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I bet that would help get the ratings back up!!

[LMITOUT]

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I just cant wait till France gets hit with a chair.......

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I bet that would help get the ratings back up!!

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Don't count it out just yet!

[snowman678]

I think if anything, those late cautions hurt Montoya. He was gaining ground fast enough under green to have made it to the front; the cautions just reduced the number of laps for him to get by. Also, don't forget about the number of cautions AFTER he had the lead, I suppose those helped him somehow too right?

[LMITOUT]

If I remember right, he got the lead with just 8 laps left.

He was over 15 seconds behind the leader at one point. Getting to the back of the car ahead of you is one thing, passing is another and they always say that it gets tougher the further you get towards the front. The cautions eliminated those long gaps between him and the next car....time that he didn't have to make up on the track. It helped.

[lawdog]

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Last year a Latino driver would have won the race too if (I believe it was) Kyle Busch hadn't of taken him out.

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No way, Kyle was MUCH faster, if he wouldn't have taken him out, he could have easily passed him elsewhere at a better time. He was lights out faster.

[snowman678]

He may have been 15 seconds behind "at some point", but not with 8 laps to go and he was running lap times over a second per lap faster than anyone else on the track. Like I said, did those restarts after he had the lead help? There were at least 2 of them, where Hamlin had a chance to get by (or at the very least put some pressure on)that he wouldn't have had if it would have stayed green. Maybe there was a conspiracy, I don't know, but he was the fastest car on the track all day long, there's no doubt about that.

[LMITOUT]

Of course he wasn't 15 seconds behind with 8 laps to go because all the cautions helped him catch up and get to that point!!

I never said his car wasn't fast, but there is only so much a fast car can do to come back from 20 something place to the front on a roadcourse.

Lets do the math, if he was 5 seconds behind the car in front of him and he was supposedly one second faster than that car, it would take approximately five laps to just get behind him, let alone get around him. I'll take a caution of two laps to eliminate five laps of racing anyday to catch the guy in front of me. Not to mention the car he is trying to pass is now right behind the next car because of the caution.

Once he got in front the cautions didn't mean anything because, as you said, he had the fastest car. The key is "once he got in front" and how he got there.

I know he passed a lot of cars on his own, but in doing so it created huge gaps between the next car and so forth. The so-called cautions eliminated those gaps and saved time for him. Like was said earlier, local cautions were probably more called for rather than full course cautions.

Call me a conspiracist (I do), but NASCAR doesn't have the best reputation lately of an honest win without some help from above (race control) and it's very transparent to many people. Last weekend seemed way too convenient to me, but if I was lining my pockets with peso's I wouldn't say much either.

[snowman678]

Once he was in front, couldn't the cautions have helped the guys behind him, just the same as they helped him when he was behind? As I recall, after his fuel problem, he came out on the restart and was around that 15 seconds behind mark; with, I believe, 26 laps to go. Do the math, he COULD have made it. I'm not saying he WOULD have, but it is possible. I agree there are many things in Nascar that are suspicious, some were listed above. A couple more: Jimmy Johnson wins pretty much every race at LOWES motor speedway. Jeff Gordon's win in the dual 150 was allowed because his team "accidentally" cheated by failing inspection and he wasn't docked any points, where other "cheaters" were. Obviously Jr's Daytona win is probably the most suspect. My whole point is that if you look hard enough you can find strange coincidences in almost everything. I guess if it bothered me as much as it does some people, I would just quit watching.

[LMITOUT]

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I would just quit watching.

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Believe me, I don't enjoy watching the races as much as I used to, and there will be a lot more people losing interest if they keep doing this funny business. The sport is going downhill fast because of greed.

[PierBridge]

No doubt!

[snowman678]

I have to admit, that there are certain races that aren't as interesting for me, but I really like the road races, I think it really showcases the drivers talent better than some of the ovals. I'm a F1 fan, thats why I'm glad to see Montoya in Nascar, I want to see how a successful F1 driver does against the best Nascar drivers. I just wish that he was in better equipment.

On a side note, it was pretty cool when they had Jeff Gordon and Montoya @ Indy a couple of years ago & they traded cars for a while. Gordon started out a little shaky the first couple of laps, but towards the end he was turning lap times that would have qualified him for the F1 race, that was impressive.

[Juneau4]

Why all the annalysis? Just enjoy the race and see what happens! Thats what any sport is about- Enjoyment. No form of entertainment makes any material product-just entertainment.