DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- His NASCAR education began not with 42 other cars on the racetrack and thousands of people in the grandstands, but on barren test ovals with only his team members in attendance. They'd change the track bar, send him out, bring him in, and change the track bar again. They'd do the same thing with the sway bar, with the A-frame, with the steering box, making incremental adjustments over and over so Juan Montoya could learn how they affected the feel of the car.

Donnie Wingo

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And over time, they saw results. When he first made the transition from Formula One, Montoya needed the car to be tight -- which left it more stable, but too slow. Gradually they loosened it up, to the point where he had the car as loose as he could drive it during a fall test at Atlanta. Gradually the former Indianapolis 500 champion began to learn how to communicate to his crew what the car needed. And gradually Montoya grew more comfortable, to the point where he won one Cup event last season and enters this year with his sights set on the Chase.

"I think making the Chase is something we can definitely do. We've been so close as a team over the last four years. We were within like 15 points two times," said crew chief Donnie Wingo, referring to near misses by Jamie McMurray, a former driver of his Texaco-backed car. "It's frustrating when you get that close. I think this year we can do it. I think we've got the tools, I think we definitely have the driver, I think we have the team to do it."

That's quite a contrast to this time last season, when the brass at Chip Ganassi Racing was careful not to place any expectations on a driver who had world-class talent but virtually no experience in full-bodied racecars. Now, there is a clear baseline -- last year's 20th-place points finish, which included a Cup victory on the road course at Sonoma, a runner-up finish at Indianapolis, and a victory in a then-Busch event on the road course in Mexico City. The goals now are a little more tangible, a little easier to distill. But Montoya also realizes he's still learning, and isn't far removed in time from that neophyte who was taught car setup step by painstaking step.

"Do we think we can get in the Chase? Yeah. Do we think we can have a chance at winning a race on an oval? Yeah. Do we think we can win again on a road course? Probably. But there are so many things that can happen. Somebody can have better fuel mileage than you, so they win on a road course. Or, you come into the pits, and it's the wrong call. Any given day, there are four to five guys who can win the race," said Montoya, participating in this week's opening session of Sprint Cup testing at Daytona International Speedway.

"Like Sonoma, we didn't have the fastest car. We had a much better car at Watkins [Glen], and we sucked. Who thought I was going to finish second at frigging Indy? I didn't. I thought, we get a top-10 out of this, it's awesome. We dropped to sixth or seventh, and I was happy with that, working the car a little bit. I think that's one of the biggest things, I learned to adjust the car during the race. I think I learned a little bit, but I think that's my weakest thing ... know just how much we need to change the car."

Montoya suffered through some dizzying periods of inconsistency last season, and his struggles on intermediate tracks doomed any hope he had of making NASCAR's playoff as a rookie. For a driver who raced for one of the elite programs in F1 -- a series where only a handful of cars have a legitimate chance to win -- the week-to-week efforts it took just to make the car go fast were an eye-opener. This wasn't McLaren-Mercedes, where running fifth is an abject disappointment. In accepting his 2007 Rookie of the Year award last month, Montoya remarked that never in his life had he raced so hard to finish 20th.

"I understand now that when you suck, you really suck," the Colombian said. "The word 'sucking,' until you drive a stock car, you don't know what it means. Honestly. It's amazing that you can actually go to a race weekend, qualify 35th, and you can run 30th all day and be two laps down and not even know what's hit you. And you go to the next week thinking, we suck, and you finish third. What did we do different? You look at it, and you didn't do anything different. It's just, the car was faster, you were more comfortable, and the setup was better."

Yet despite those maddening peaks and valleys, Montoya said he never regretted his decision to leave the open-wheel ranks behind. He's clearly enjoying himself, amazed at how much more often he gets recognized back home in Miami, amazed at the fan mail he receives from Venezuelans and Colombians tuning into NASCAR to see him race, amazed at a level of camaraderie among drivers unlike anything he experienced in F1. He even likes the fact that the less open-minded among the sport's fan base shower him with boos every time he takes the stage for driver introductions.

"Hey, I'd rather have boos than get ignored," he said. "If you're getting booed, it's because people are paying attention. To be realistic, the only guy who doesn't get booed is [Dale Earnhardt] Junior. Everybody else is either booed or ignored. I guess I'm doing pretty good there."

Wingo seems to be enjoying the ride, too. The veteran crew chief, who tutored under legendary owner Bud Moore and won two races with Geoffrey Bodine, had never quite seen anything quite like Montoya, who will wail and cuss over the radio during the race and then make a point to thank all his crew members afterward.

"He's so intense, he's so competitive," Wingo said. "He'll scream and raise hell all day long, some days over finishing 10th if we had a top-five car. But at the end of the day, he shakes everybody's hands on the team and thanks them for the job they've done. I think that's cool, because it motivates the guys to want to do a better job. As an organization, you have to have guys like that who motivate people and drive you to the next level."

Montoya has even patched things up with Kevin Harvick, with whom he was involved in a shoving match after the two wrecked at Watkins Glen, approaching his nemesis during banquet activities in New York at the behest of his team owner. But he competed last season in an atmosphere removed from any real expectation, one where he was allowed to acclimate and adjust. That's a luxury very few of his fellow competitors enjoyed. That period is ending, and giving way to a new one where Montoya will be judged more on his week-to-week results.

Even Ganassi has gone on record saying he expects Montoya to challenge for a playoff berth this year, telling reporters prior to this past season finale at Homestead that it was "Chase or bust" for his driver in 2008. From Montoya's perspective, that depends on the equipment as much as a driver.

"If our car is fast enough to make the Chase, and we don't make it, you can say we had a bad year," he said. "But if your car isn't fast enough to make the Chase ... that's why I say, you can't think about the Chase. You have to take it a week at a time. You've got to go into a weekend, see how competitive you are. If you had a top car and you finished 20th, it's your fault. You made the wrong calls, you had maybe a bad pit stop, maybe I hit the wall, things like that. Then you have to say you did a bad job. But if you're running 20th, and that's all the car will give you? You can't expect finishing 20th every week to make the Chase. One side is for the whole company to improve. The other side is, we have to deliver when the car is right."