Anticipation for Montoya's first Cup road course start

He rolled his red and black racecar into the garage area at Michigan International Speedway, the sheet metal on its right side scraped and damaged from a collision with the wall. It was yet another finish deep in the field for Juan Montoya, who during the last two months has looked like anything but a threat to win a Nextel Cup race.

But that's exactly what he is this week, when NASCAR leaves the ovals behind and makes the first of its two annual trips to a road course. The former Formula One star, who made a living racing on twisty tracks before emigrating to stock cars last season, won a Busch road course event at Mexico City in March and is widely viewed by his peers as a top contender Sunday at Infineon Raceway.

Track Smack

Just how good will Montoya drive at Sonoma? Our writers pull out the crystal ball and describe what they see.

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"I think he's going to run very well," Elliott Sadler said. "He wants to win a Nextel Cup race like the rest of us, and I think [this] week is his best chance of the year to win. He showed at Mexico how fast his car can be and how good Ganassi is on road courses, with all of their cars running good. He'll definitely be a car to beat. Do I think he's going to come in and outrun everybody like some of the media think? No, but he's definitely got a great shot.

"Racing against Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon and some of these other guys on road courses who are up front every week, it's going to be tough. Do I think Juan has a good shot at it? Yes, I do. His best, legitimate shot to get a win is [this] week."

It can't come fast enough. The seven-time F1 winner and former Indianapolis 500 champion is mired in his worst slump since joining NASCAR, cracking the top 20 just once in his last eight starts. Early contact with the wall at Michigan sent him to a last-place finish. Add that to a tough weekend full of slow practice times and hard-to-handle racecars, the Colombian wasn't in much of a mood to discuss competing on a road course.

"I'm not really even thinking about it right now," he said. "It's two weekends a year we go to road courses. It really doesn't matter how good or how bad you run there. Yeah, great, we can get a great result and have a chance at winning the race, but we need to focus on running good where we run 99 percent of the time."

Points leader Jeff Gordon has won five of the last nine events on the Sonoma, Calif., road course and is set to participate in the event after witnessing the birth of his first child on Wednesday (Garage Pass). Potential substitute driver Mark Martin won't be needed behind the wheel of the No. 24 car, but he looks forward to watching Montoya just the same. (Continued)