Where's Juan? 'Dega

Juan Montoya will make his Cup Series debut at Talladega this weekend -- but it's a track he has some stock-car knowledge to fall back on. Montoya raced in the ARCA race at 'Dega last year and finished fifth.

Last week at Phoenix, Montoya finished 33rd and dropped to 16th in the standings, now 68 points outside the top 12 -- the cut-off for the Chase for the Nextel Cup.

"It started pretty decent. We were not fast enough but we were not that bad," Montoya said. "It just got worse as the night went on. It was loose in, tight in the center and loose off. You tried to improve one thing and the other thing gets worse and so on so there's a little bit of a vicious circle. You fix, it gets worse, it gets better, it gets worse and it gets better. It's just terrible.

"Honestly, as the race went on we got slower and slower and slower and slower and slower. But that's racing."

Montoya leads the rookie of the year standings by five points over David Ragan.