Montoya leaves Brickyard with nothing left to prove

INDIANAPOLIS -- Four years ago, Jeff Gordon would have never guessed that Juan Montoya would eventually make the move into NASCAR. When the Formula One driver and the four-time Nextel Cup champion swapped rides during an exhibition at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2003, the Colombian went into the first turn of the road course so hot that he locked up the front tires on the heavier stock car.

"I didn't think that you'd want to do this," Gordon told Montoya on Sunday.

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Montoya, sitting next to Gordon in the interview room at the famed 2.5-mile track, smiled at the memory. "It was fun," he said. So was Sunday, when in the midst of another round of Hoosier hysteria, the 31-year-old from Bogota turned in a runner-up finish in the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard that should dispel any doubts about his ability to contend for victories on any type of track on the Nextel Cup tour.

Tony Stewart surely touched off a celebration at the Moose Lodge in his native Columbus, Ind., with his second career victory at Indianapolis, driving away in an orange and white car that was easily the class of the field. But Sunday also served notice that Montoya, the most decorated Nextel Cup rookie in the sport's modern history, is a threat to win at tracks other than those that include both right and left turns. He came to arguably the most difficult oval in NASCAR, and made it look effortless.

"This place to me is tough, but he says it's easy," said Donnie Wingo, Montoya's crew chief. "I think it's one of the toughest places to come to and run, but he made it look easy [Sunday]. In qualifying, he did really good. You couldn't ask for a better weekend, except for a win."

Montoya left Indianapolis with nothing left to prove to anyone, including the fans who for some reason boo him during driver introductions before the race. He's now finished fourth or better in all three major races at Indianapolis, with Sunday's result following a dominant victory in the 2000 Indianapolis 500 and a fourth-place result in F1's United States Grand Prix in 2002. He's won on each of NASCAR's top two circuits, at Mexico City in the Busch tour in February and at Sonoma, Calif., in the big show in June.

And enough of the whining about how those two victories came on road courses. After his performance at Indianapolis, caveats like that no longer apply. Flukes don't overtake Gordon for second place at the Brickyard with three laps remaining. After Sunday, the idea of Montoya winning on an oval track on the Nextel Cup circuit seems less a matter of if, but when.

"I don't think he has anything left to prove except to himself," Wingo said. "He wants to win on an oval. We want to win, too. Second is the first runner-up. I don't think he really has anything to prove to anybody. We still have to get better as a team, a group, and give him better cars at some of these places. But I think we're gaining on it, and that's all you can ask for the first year with a rookie guy who comes from another series, to be able to pick up momentum and get better and better each week. I think that's what we've done." (Continued)