Monster Montoya Back In The USA

[On The Edge of Insanity]

Just a little something I posted on my Facebook, just thought I'd put it up here as well for any motorsport fans.

Monster Montoya Back In The USA

Tomorrow evening the man known as 'The Monster', Juan Pablo Montoya kicks off his first full season in the NASCAR Nextel Cup at the Daytona 500 (00:10 - 03:00 Sunday Night/Monday morning on Channel Five for fellow sado-masicists with work on Monday). Bored with F1, he's back in the USA, scene of previous successes in Indycar, including an Indy 500 victory and the CART title, to rediscover his passion for racing, something that it seems he lost somewhen during his year and a half with Mclaren.

F1's loss is definitely Nascar's gain, because for three years, no-one took the fight to Michael Schumacher in quite the way that Montoya did. From the moment he barged past the German for the lead in Brazil 2001 () it was clear that here was a driver who was not afraid to challenge the authority in F1 and was just out to race as hard as he could. They would go on to have many battles in those next three years, Montoya performing one of the best moves ever on Schumacher at Spa in 2004 (), causing the American crowd to roar (or as Murray puts it, rooooarrrr!) at the US GP 2001 (), and constantly disputing with the German in press conferences (). Had it not been for Montoya's teammate Ralf Schumacher being so shy to pass his brother in Canada and a ridiculous drive-thru penalty given to Montoya for an incident with Barrichello at the US Grand Prix it is conceivable that Juan Pablo could have won the championship in 2003.

One more season with Williams in 2004, including a victory in his last race for the team in Brazil, then led into a move to Mclaren for the 2005 season. In truth Montoya never really fitted in with the more regimental style at Mclaren, a situation probably not helped by his 'tennis accident' which caused him to miss a few GPs near the start of the season. Various mistakes which cost the team points also didn't help, but he ended 2005 with a better last quarter of the season than his teammate Raikonnen and things looked promising going into 2006. However, the Mclaren was well off the pace of the Ferrari and Renault and the poor performance of the car seemed to de-motivate Montoya who despite qualifying well, was losing out to teammate Raikonnen in the races. After an incident with Nico Rosberg in Canada, the final straw was in the US GP, where he took out Raikonnen (and himself) going into the first corner. A week or so later it was announced that he was joining Nascar to team up with Chip Ganassi, his team owner from the Indycar days and that Mclaren were replacing him until the end of the season.

Some promising showings in the few Busch series' races he entered last year, along with a victory at the Daytona 24hrs sportscar event a couple of weeks ago have setup Montoya well for a good crack at the Nextel Cup this year, starting with the Daytona 500 on Sunday. I for one am looking forward to seeing how he fares this year, and whilst I am not a great fan of Nascar in general, any series' which sees Montoya back to his fighting best is good with me and I think may well lead to many Monday mornings involving sleeping at my desk this year. So good luck 'Monster', it will be good to see you back to your best.

PS - just a couple extra little videos;

Here's Montoya having his head 'broken' by a cameraman ()
And a great battle with Andretti for the victory in an Indycar race in 2000
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