Chip Ganassi is putting pressure on Juan Montoya to end the owner's four-year drought of Victory Lane visits. Credit: Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images

Ganassi losing patience going into seventh year

Team owner's last win came in 2002 with Jamie McMurray

CONCORD, N.C. -- The seven-year itch has become a rash that is driving owner Chip Ganassi to the brink of losing what little patience he has left.

To scratch it, there is only one cure. And Ganassi, who is entering his seventh season in NASCAR, knows the elusive elixir for what ails him is winning.

In 16 years as an owner in the IRL and CART IndyCar Series, Ganassi got used to it. His teams won four CART championships in a row during one stretch, including the 1999 championship with then-rookie driver Juan Montoya -- who now is about to begin his first full season driving for Ganassi in the Nextel Cup series.

With Montoya in place behind the wheel of one of his three Nextel Cup cars, Ganassi said the time is now to start carrying over the winning tradition his operation has enjoyed in Indy cars.

It thus far has eluded him in NASCAR, where in the last six years his teams have registered a total of just five wins -- four by Sterling Marlin and one by Jamie McMurray -- the last of which came in 2002. Marlin and McMurray no longer drive for Ganassi, whose other Cup drivers are young guns David Stremme and Reed Sorenson.

By comparison, Ganassi's open-wheel teams have registered 50 career wins since 1990. So it's no small wonder that he is growing frustrated with his struggling stock-car operation.

"I think it's safe to say that most people wouldn't characterize me as patient -- and I'm not," Ganassi said yesterday as the Lowe's Motor Speedway preseason media tour opened. "But I do recognize that it's a building-block process in this business. I think we're about there in terms of building blocks, and I certainly can't wait for this season to start."

Ganassi's minority partner is Felix Sabates, who can relate after his own run as an independent owner ended in 2000 with just seven career wins over 587 starts. Ganassi's teams have won their five races in a total of 580 starts.

Sabates and Ganassi agreed that they expected last year to produce better results, when Stremme and Sorenson struggled and Casey Mears, who since has departed for a ride with Hendrick Motorsports, came oh-so-close with two top-five finishes and eight top-10s, but failed to win a race.

	David Stremme looks to build on last year's late-season success. Credit: Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images
	Inside the Numbers Chip Ganassi Racing in '06 Driver Races W T5 T10 C. Mears 36 0 2 8 J. Montoya 1 0 0 0 S. Pruett 2 0 0 1 R. Sorenson 36 0 1 5 D. Stremme 34 0 0 0 Total 109 0 3 14

"We were very disappointed last year. We expected to have a better year," Sabates said. "We thought Casey would really blossom last year, and Casey could have won two or three races. It wasn't his fault that he didn't. I mean, in Chicago we ran out of gas with one lap to go. Nobody else ran out of gas.

"We should have done better than we did, and we were disappointed. But David Stremme made a big comeback at the end of last year, and people don't realize that Reed Sorenson isn't even 21 years old yet. I can't even take him to a bar yet. He'll be 21 years old on the fifth of February. He's just a kid."

Yet most of the Ganassi-Sabates team's hopes this year ride on Montoya, who is making the transition from Formula One racing and has openly declared that he expects to win some races.

"Anytime you can bring a guy in on any team in any sport with his level of experience and his level of confidence, he's going to bring something to the team," Ganassi said. "Let's face it: the guy is known world-wide. So that raises the level of the water for everybody, and I think that's good. It perks everybody up and makes them dig a little deeper."

Sabates added: "I think our guys have the ability to compete and be up front. One thing that's good (is that) with Juan here now, if we get ticked off at somebody we can just talk in Spanish. We can say things behind your back right in front of you, and you (in the media) won't know what we're saying."

Ganassi certainly hopes that it does not come to that. He's tired of his teams running back in the pack, and would welcome the opportunity to speak some English in Victory Lane for a change.

He said that the struggles they've endured in recent years have only made their desire to get back there that much stronger.

"I don't know that it's a high level of frustration. It digs at you a little bit and it makes you stronger, I think," Ganassi said. "It's making me stronger. It's just making me want to do it more and more and more, probably to the detriment of some things around me. But it just makes my fire burn harder and hotter."