For fast-learning Montoya, the curve only gets steeper (cont'd)

There are plenty of more accomplished NASCAR drivers -- like Kurt Busch, Ryan Newman and Dale Earnhardt Jr. -- staring up at him in the Nextel Cup standings. But now the series moves to tiny Bristol Motor Speedway, where Montoya's learning curve becomes as steep as the 36-degree banking in the corners of the east Tennessee track.

Unsweet dreams

Juan Montoya dreams of Atlanta and unfortunately, Bristol, too. "I'm getting comfortable now on these tracks. I need to work on the other ones. We go to Bristol, that's going to be a nightmare. Martinsville will probably be another tough one."

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Montoya may have won on the highly technical F1 street course at Monaco -- arguably the most difficult automobile racecourse on the planet -- but he's never seen anything like Bristol, home to Sunday's Food City 500. He's never raced at a venue that's the equivalent of an automotive fistfight, never competed at a place where contact is almost compulsory, never followed that with another race at another short track that's less about winning and more about attrition.

So far, we've learned much about Juan Montoya -- that he'll be the driver to beat on every road course, that he's not afraid to stick the nose of his car in places some people don't think it belongs, that he can get to the front in Ganassi cars that haven't been near the front a whole lot the last few years, that innate driving talent translates from one series to the next. And we'll know much more about him after two weeks roughing it at Bristol and Martinsville, places where his aggressiveness behind the wheel will be both his biggest obstacle and best friend.

The next two Nextel Cup events will show us how much Montoya still has to learn, or prove that he's much further ahead than even his Atlanta race indicated. More minefields loom -- Phoenix, Darlington, quirky, cantankerous places sure to remind him he's not in Barcelona anymore. But if he makes it to the Coca-Cola 600 in roughly the same points shape he's in now (15th) he'll have progressed from NASCAR neophyte to legitimate Chase contender.

That's a lot to ask for from a driver who's still relatively new to this, and has been careful to avoid any kind of concrete expectations. Atlanta won't happen every week. But all it took was one afternoon in the hazy woods of north Georgia to prove that for Montoya, anything is possible.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.