For fast-learning Montoya, the curve only gets steeper

Juan Montoya's old pals enjoyed quite a weekend in Australia. Kimi Raikkonen, his former teammate with the McLaren Mercedes Formula One team, won the circuit's season-opening race in Melbourne. Two new drivers for McLaren, which split with the seven-time F1 race winner after last season, placed second and third.

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Not than Montoya noticed. The most accomplished rookie in the history of NASCAR's premier series watched only the start of the race, a typical F1 snooze-fest that Raikkonen won by more than seven seconds. The next day he turned in an eyebrow-raising drive at Atlanta Motor Speedway that gave everyone in Nextel Cup a glimpse of what the Colombian is capable.

It wasn't just the result, a career-best fifth-place finish on a superfast 1.5-mile oval Montoya had seen for the first time just three days earlier. It was how he did it -- running up against the wall, slapping the concrete but staying in contention, showing that mixture of pesky aggression and racetrack panache that made him such a star in staid, robotic Formula One.

Too bad there are some old-school types out there who still can't get past the guy's accent. Maybe one day they'll drop the xenophobic tendencies long enough to realize that he's just the kind of driver they'd like to watch. Because what Montoya did Sunday was old-school to the core, hanging his car out for all it was worth, taking risks, hustling that Dodge around Atlanta in a way that left even his peers impressed.

Montoya's transition from open-wheeled cars has appeared seamless to this point, with a top-20 in the Daytona 500 followed by competitive runs at California and Las Vegas, a victory in the Busch race at Mexico City, and Sunday's coming-out party at Atlanta. By any standard, he's off to an astonishingly quick start. In less than a year, he's graduated from a driver with almost zero stock-car experience to someone who could win on an oval track at some point this season. (Continued)