Friday
Juan Pablo Montoya Blisters a New Track Record to Win the Pole at New Hampshire
Press ReleaseTony Stewart Gives Team Chevy Front Row for Race No. 1 of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup
Montoya, who is seeded 11th of the 12 drivers in the 10-race battle for the championship, laid down a lap of 28.545 seconds, 133.431 mph to score his second career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS) pole.
Two time NSCS champion Tony Stewart put his No. 14 Office Depot/Old Spice Impala SS second in the starting order of the 43-car field. Seeded second in the Chase order, Stewart scored his 12th top-10 starting position of the season.
A total of 14 Team Chevy drivers qualified to start Sunday’s 300-lap/317.4-mile race.
Bobby Labonte qualified the No. 71 TRG Motorsports Impala SS in the eighth position. The sixth Chase seed, Jeff Gordon, will start the No. 24 DuPont/National Guard Yellow Ribbon Impala SS in the 10th spot on the grid.
Other Team Chevy Chase contenders qualified as follows: No. 1 seed, Mark Martin will start the No. 5 CARQUEST /Kellogg’s Impala SS from the 14th position. Jimmie Johnson, the third place seed, will roll off 16th behind the wheel of the No. 48 Lowe’s Impala SS. Ryan Newman, the 10th-place seed, put the No. 39 US Army Impala SS in the 18th starting postion.
Kurt Busch (Dodge), Denny Hamlin (Toyota) and Carl Edwards (Ford) complete the top-five qualifiers.
Sunday’s race is scheduled to take the green flag at 2:00 p.m. EDT with live coverage on ABC TV, PRN Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio.
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA, NO. 42 TARGET IMPALA SS – POLE WINNER:
TALK ABOUT YOUR RECORD-SETTING LAP
“It was a good lap, I guess (laughs). I don’t know. To tell the truth, most of the practice we did race runs. We switched to qualifying runs. Did one lap. Came in. At the end of practice we did another run. The lap wasn’t that great. So it’s okay. Can’t complain.”
NOW THAT YOU ARE IN THE CHASE, WILL YOU TAKE MORE CHANCES? ARE ALL BETS OFF?
“I don’t think with top 10′s you’re going to win the championship. But at the same time, you look at Brian Vickers. He had one win, but apart from one win he was like 7th or 8th or 6th or 5th. And if you look at that average, it was the best average in the last 10 races. Right now, there’s not a clear guy that you can say man, this guy is just going to dominate every week. So, I think you’ve got to be very smart about it. Most of the cars in the Chase are going to be up there. To gain points on them is going to be really hard. To lose points to them is going to be very easy. I think you’ve got to be very smart on that aspect, but you’ve got to go for wins. You’ve got to go for broke here.”
EARLIER TODAY, YOU SAID YOU SHOULD GO FOR WINS IF THE SHOT WAS THERE. DOES THIS POLE AND STARTING UP FRONT GIVE YOU ANY EARLY INDICATION THAT THE OPPORTUNITY MIGHT BE THERE ON SUNDAY?
“No, if it is, great. But you know how these races go. If it was a 10-lap shootout, I’ll say, hey, we’re looking good. But what is it like 300 laps or something? Or 400 laps? I don’t even know. It’s a bunch of laps.”
JEFF BURTON ONCE LED EVERY LAP HERE
“Oh, I wouldn’t mind, you know. As long as I lead the last one, I don’t care. Every pit stop needs to be good and you’ve got to have a good car because you know, you’re not going to come out of the pits; you know if I’m leading, the chances of coming out of the pits every time leading are pretty slim. So you’ve got to have a good car for traffic. And you’ve got to be smart and see where your car is good and where it’s not, the way you do every week.”
AFTER THE CHASE AT RIR, MARK MARTIN SAID YOU WERE THE GUY WHO LOOKED TO BE THE MOST DANGEROUS IN THE CHASE.
“And I think it’s him (laughter). I honestly believe, you know, Mark Martin right now; some weeks they’ve run out of fuel or you know they can beat themselves pretty easy. But on speed? I would think that’s the car to beat. I think it’s great that he thinks a car (to watch), and hey it makes you feel good, and I like Mark Martin saying that. But I’m always in the theory of let the driving do the talking.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK HE KNEW THAT THE REST OF US DON’T KNOW ABOUT IT
“I don’t know either so why don’t you tell me (laughter). Honestly, I really don’t know. I think he knows there are a lot of 1.5-mile race tracks and we run really well there. And I think our weakest race track is Richmond. We aren’t going to Richmond, so I don’t mind (laughs). No Richmond and no Michigan so I’m happy.”
IT TOOK A LITTLE BIT OF TIME FOR YOU TO SETTLE IN
“You think?”
YEAH, I THINK. DO YOU THINK THIS WILL ENCOURAGE TEAM OWNERS TO LOOK A LITTLE LONGER AT OPEN WHEEL DRIVERS WHO WANT TO DO THE CROSSOVER?
“The question is are they willing to wait for three years? You know we ran pretty good the first year. Last year was horrible. But I think what Gibbs did this year with Joey (Logano) is the same thing. It’s a young guy who has not a lot of experience. The first five or six races, he struggled. And now he’s starting to get it together and some weeks he still struggles but in the long term he’s going to be a good guy. And people need to remember that. You can have team owners like that who will stick by you and believe in you. If you run bad one year, then oh, it doesn’t work. And they get somebody else. Those teams will never come out of that hole. If you look at Brian Pattie and myself, look at the way we’re running right now. Look at how our cars are every week. Go back a year from now and when we would run 15th, we were celebrating. Honestly, it was like yeah, 15th! We didn’t finish 25th. It takes time. I’ll tell you, these cars don’t drive anything like an open wheel (car); nothing like I’ve driven before. There is a certain way you’ve got to drive them to go fast. If you ask me to explain it to you, I couldn’t. But I learned to drive them. I know how deep I need to go. I know how hard I need to press the brakes and how I need to get on the gas. Even like there are some weeks, I struggle. There are a lot of weeks where I go to Mark Martin and say I don’t know what to do. He looks at me and starts laughing. I say I’m serious you know?
“When I go to him and I say I can’t do this and I can’t do that; it’s like running the bottom. I’m getting better at it, I’ll tell you that. If it’s 10 laps around the bottom, probably six or seven I can get right. But he gets 10 out of 10 right. That guy never misses it. He drives it in really hard. I drive it in hard and I get to the bottom and the front goes (zip-zip) straight up. So for me to get to the bottom I’ve got to get out of the gas a lot earlier than they do and I can run a decent pace, but Mark drives it all the way in, gets to the bottom, and the thing goes poof! It turns around the bottom and you go. Ahh. But on the top, you know I’ve done it so long on the top that I’m pretty good in the middle and on the top when I have more race track. It seems like I don’t mind having the wall on the right but that line on the left is not my friend.”
AT WHAT POINT DID YOU STOP CONSIDERING YOURSELF AN OPEN WHEEL DRIVER AND START CONSIDERING YOURSELF A FULL TIME STOCK CAR DRIVER?
“Oh, from the day I came I knew I was committed to be 100 percent in stock car. A lot of guys come here and say oh we’re going to try for a couple of weeks. If you come here for a couple of weeks, nobody is going to respect you. You can’t race people like you ran open wheel. I read an article about Danica (Patrick) may be coming and if she’s coming, people won’t like when she runs good. If she runs somebody hard, they’ll dump her. I got dumped a lot of times. You’ve got to understand. When you come from open wheel, you have a wing. So you stick that nose in and somebody turns you get out of the gas because of the wing. You’ve got a bumper here. You stick that nose in and somebody turns in and later. You know it’s going to happen so you’ve got to give the guy some room.”
AT TALLADEGA YOU TALKED ABOUT HOW DIFFICULT IT WAS TO DRIVE THE CAR. IS THIS YOUR REAL POLE?
“Yeah, I think Talladega is a great team effort. It shows how good our cars are on restrictor plate, but I think my mother could have gotten in the car and got that pole, you know? You run the top, you run the bottom wide open and you hope it’s fast enough. You’ve got to make sure you go fast through the gears and that’s the only trick. Here, you’re really got to hustle the car. Last week, I was fastest in practice. I went out to qualify and qualified 20th. And I thought it was an awesome lap. I finished the lap and thought I really got that one together. I’m like, oh great. What do I got to do to come back from practice and nail qualifying? Here we didn’t do anything different and it happened. The thing starts clicking. It’s like when you win. Once you win, things will start clicking and you’ll be fine.”
TALK ABOUT HOW MUCH BETTER YOU ARE AT GETTING ON AND OFF PIT ROAD AS OPPOSED TO A YEAR AGO: “In Formula One, you really have to come in to the guys really really hot. The harder thing here is that if you try to go in that hot, you are going to miss it by like three pits. You don’t to give up time, but there are little things like make sure when you are sliding through, stay on the brakes so they guys know and can see the nuts and where to start. Don’t slide when you are coming in and come off the brakes because they have to wait until the wheel stops again. So, little things like that. You have to play with the box and a lot of it is the crew chief, knowing how far. Are you going to be blocked by somebody coming out? You have to make sure you pit early enough. If it is closed behind you need to go deep enough. You have got to learn to give people room here. It is really weird, but you have to.
“Last couple of races our pit crew has been really conservative. Make sure nothing is loose. You can not afford to have a loose wheel when you are in that position in the Chase. You know we had flat tires and all kinds of issues, but we didn’t make a mistake. I think we have got to keep doing that. Our pit stops need to be a little faster, but they are doing that. When they nail it, it is really good.”
DID YOU EVER HAVE A THOUGHT THAT NASCAR WOULD BE TOO DIFFICULT OR DID YOU KNOW RIGHT AWAY THAT YOU WOULD FIT RIGHT IN? “The way I always see things in life even when I was in Formula One and racing Schumacher and all of that, it is simple. You have two arms, two legs, two eyes, there is nothing different. So, if they can do it, that means you can do it. As long as you work hard enough for it, it is ok. Is it easy? No, it is never easy. You have to know to get the right people. You need people to work as hard as you work and you need people to be as committed as you are to this.”
TONY STEWART, NO. 14 OFFICE DEPOT/OLD SPICE IMPALA SS, QUALIFIED 2ND: TALK ABOUT YOUR LAP: “It was good. I was happy with it. I think we ran a 74 in practice and ended up running a 72 in qualifying. So, we backed up what we ran, pretty happy with that. Normally when we qualify well here, we race really well here. It is a perfect start to the weekend so far.”
HAS JUAN PABLO MONTOYA GIVEN YOU AND OTHER TEAM OWNERS THE MINDSET TO LOOK AT OTHER OPEN WHEEL DRIVERS? “I think Juan is the exception to the rule. You have to look at them individually. Juan has done a great job obviously, I have said that from day one. There are others that have come in that haven’t done a very good job. Takes people a long time for people to get used to these cars when you come from open wheel. I don’t know, I am not sure I know exactly what you are wanting from this. There have not been very many guys that have been very good at it here recently and he has been the exception to the rule for sure. He is the guy that it doesn’t matter what kind of car you throw him in, he is going to figure it out. But I’m not sure that everybody has the talent level that he has.”
DO YOU APPROACH EACH CHASE RACE INDIVIDUALLY OR DO YOU HAVE A GAME PLAN? IS THE GOAL TO JUST LEAVE HERE NOT TAKING YOURSELF OUT OF CONTENTION FOR THE TITLE? “I think so. You can’t plan on next week or the week after that. We still have to get through this weekend. It is. You have more opportunities to take yourself out of winning a championship than you do ensuring that you win a champion. I think you have to take it one week at a time. You can lose it very easily on the last race just as easily as you can on the first race. If have a bad week now you can pretty much be sure that you are going to be out of it for the next nine weeks. It is crucial to have 10 good weeks and it starts this weekend. You have got to not worry about the next nine until you get through this one first.”
HOW DO YOU KEEP YOURSELF IN CHECK WHEN THE INTENSITY OF THE CHASE IS NOW HERE? “I don’t think it changes a lot. We still have 10 weeks to go. We’ve got almost a quarter of our season still to go here in 10 weeks. It builds as you get closer to the end and you know who the guys are that have a shot to win the championship. I think the hard part is that it is hard to be super intense right now and maintain that for 10 weeks. Even though you know what is at stake, you still kind of treat it like any other week. We are going through the same process today that we went through the last week and that we went through in the spring when we were here. You try to get your car driving good and take it one day at a time. You take Sunday’s race like you do every other week. As you get closer to the end and you know kind of what the scenario is that you’re in and the cards that you are dealt, that changes it as it goes.”
About General Motors: General Motors Company, one of the world’s largest automakers, traces its roots back to 1908. With its global headquarters in Detroit, GM employs 235,000 people in every major region of the world and does business in some 140 countries. GM and its strategic partners produce cars and trucks in 34 countries, and sell and service these vehicles through the following brands: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, GM Daewoo, Holden, Opel, Vauxhall and Wuling. GM’s largest national market is the United States, followed by China, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Canada, Russia and Germany. GM’s OnStar subsidiary is the industry leader in vehicle safety, security and information services. General Motors Company acquired operations from General Motors Corporation on July 10, 2009, and references to prior periods in this and other press materials refer to operations of the old General Motors Corporation. More information on the new General Motors Company can be found at www.gm.com.
- GM Racing Communications, Press Release
Article Tags: Juan Pablo Montoya, NASCAR, NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, New Hampshire Motor Speedway, NHMS, NSCS, SYLVANIA 300, Sylvania 300 Qualifying, Team Chevy, Tony Stewart
