Montoya, Wingo make unlikely pairing work (cont'd)

But Wingo never felt they were that far off. They tweaked the balance, tried to keep the car from sliding around as much, and the next day needed only five laps to post one of the fastest laps in practice. But then there was still the little matter of that deep starting position, a deficit even a road-course ace like Montoya might not be able to make up on his own. "We knew he could get half of them," the crew chief said, referring to the 31 drivers ahead of them on the grid. "If we could get the other half, we'd be in pretty good shape."

Lap-by-Lap

Juan Montoya led his first Nextel Cup lap when he got by Jamie McMurray for good on Lap 104 of 110 and had enough fuel to win the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway.

• Complete details, click here
• Race Video, click here

They did just that, bursting into the top 10 by the halfway point. Wingo and Ganassi wanted Montoya to be patient, to be careful, to be smooth. And for the most part -- a punt of Kurt Busch notwithstanding -- he was, surprising those who remember an F1 driver brazen enough to move Michael Schumacher out of the way. "It's a little early to race these guys," he once told his crew, causing his car owner and crew chief to glance at one another in disbelief.

"I looked at Wingo, and Wingo looked at me, we were looking around thinking, 'I must have heard that from somebody else's radio,'" Ganassi said.

He would need that patience later on, as the fuel ran low and the race wore down and the question of whether Montoya could make it all the way hung in the bright blue wine country sky. Wingo implored him, urged him to take it easy whenever he could. "Everybody around here is in the same boat, trying to save fuel for the end," he told his driver over the radio.

They make for an interesting partnership, a combination of driver and crew chief that's all about contrast. Montoya is the cosmopolitan one, the F1 expatriate who still carries the vestiges of that circuit's dash and flair. Wingo hails from NASCAR's ancestral heartland, climbing the career ladder as a mechanic before breaking in as a crew chief with legendary Spartanburg-based car owner Bud Moore. The only Columbia he knew growing up was South Carolina's capital city.

But somehow, despite an ungainly clash of accents over the radio, they make it work. They certainly did Sunday, when Montoya followed Wingo's instructions to the letter, and coaxed enough mileage out of his black Dodge to add a NASCAR victory to his open-wheel triumphs in Indianapolis, Monte Carlo, Monza and elsewhere around the world.

"We were like a half a gallon short, the way we had it figured. That's basically about a lap," said Wingo, a winner on NASCAR's top series for the fifth time. "We were about a lap short. We kept hounding and hounding and hounding, save fuel, save fuel, save fuel. I think he saved a lot of fuel there, and really didn't lose any lap times by doing it. It all worked out good. He did a great job."

So great, in fact, that Montoya had enough fuel remaining to finish the cool-down lap and do a burnout. The light indicating an empty fuel cell didn't illuminate until he pulled into Victory Lane. By that time, the crisis had passed. All that was left for Wingo to do was smile for the cameras, and take a well-earned swig from a magnum of champagne.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.