Brian Pattie has been a witness to Juan Montoya's NASCAR journey since the very beginning, from that first test at New Smyrna Speedway more than three years ago. Rather than focus on numbers, the man who would eventually become crew chief for the No. 42 team would go stand inside the corners of the Florida short track and just watch Montoya drive.

Lap after lap, he'd observe entry and exit points, hear the changes in engine noise that accompanied brake or throttle, and study how this exotic new driver managed a bulkier stock car. Then he'd go report his findings to the people running the test.

It wasn't exactly a textbook approach. But that's Pattie, who's not exactly a textbook guy. After all, it's been his willingness to not just think outside the box, but bust out one of the sides, that has Montoya on the verge of contending for the Sprint Cup championship just three years after leaving Formula One behind.

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I don't want to be a one-hit wonder. I don't want to come in here and possibly make the Chase in '09, and in '10 be 20th again. It's hard to sustain this level. But with what we're doing, I think we can.

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-- BRIAN PATTIE, crew chief

"I think Brian and everybody on the team, we all do our little part," said Montoya, who moved up to a fairly comfortable seventh in points following his sixth-place result Monday at Watkins Glen International. "I think one of the biggest things is, we seem to have a very good relationship. We understand each other, and it's exciting.

"It's his first full season as a Cup crew chief, and he brought our team to a new level. It's really nice to see. But it's not only him. I think [it's] everybody from the shop to engineers, to people building the cars, everybody. It's a full team effort. You've got to say Brian is the head guy there, and he seems to be doing a great job."

No one has ever doubted the talent behind the wheel. With seven F1 victories, an Indianapolis 500 championship, and a Sprint Cup win on a road course, there's never been a question among those in the garage area about Montoya's ability to make it in NASCAR. But the pieces around him never quite fit together -- the Dodge he drive for his first two seasons clearly struggled in comparison to cars made by other manufacturers, and a succession of crew chief changes left the driver frustrated. The 2008 season that followed Montoya's breakthrough win at Infineon Raceway, the one that began with the "Chase or bust" mission of car owner Chip Ganassi, collapsed into upheaval.

At one point, Montoya had three different crew chiefs in less than a month. His primary car sponsor left the sport. Ganassi was riddled with questions about whether his organization was in disarray. People wanted to know why a talent like Montoya, stubbornly loyal to the man who brought him to NASCAR, didn't go drive for a better team.

And yet, it was that period of instability that created the championship-caliber No. 42 team that heads to Michigan this weekend. Sponsorship concerns led to a merger between Ganassi's team and Dale Earnhardt Inc., putting Montoya in a more powerful Chevrolet. And the last of those crew chief changes involved putting Pattie -- who had worked with Montoya in a handful of Nationwide events -- on top of the pit box.

"I think Juan really likes the way Brian approaches everything," said Tony Glover, team manager at Earnhardt Ganassi and a former Daytona 500-winning crew chief. "He's real thorough, real businesslike, crosses all the Ts and dots all the Is. Right now it's just a good match.

"They have a lot of confidence in each other, and that helps. The team has a lot of confidence in Juan, and Juan has a lot of confidence in the team as well. Right now, everything's going well for the 42 team."

That wasn't the case when Pattie was tabbed to replace Jimmy Elledge in May 2008. At the time, Montoya had only one top-10 finish on the season, and had fallen to 19th in points. In a "Chase or bust" situation, they were clearly going bust. For Pattie, the rebuilding was a slog -- the team managed only two more top-10s, both on road courses, for the rest of the year. But in the tire-ravaged Indianapolis event, they hit on something.

After months of trying to force Montoya to adapt to setups, Pattie approached the issue from a different angle and started tailoring setups to fit the driver. The progress didn't show on the results sheet, but the crew chief saw it, and it laid the groundwork for Montoya's rise to championship contender this year.

"You don't have the resume he's got by being a slack ass. He deserves to be here. We just needed to find the best way to get him to that point," Pattie said. "Basically, we figured out, hey, we can't tell him just to adapt to our setups. That didn't work, obviously.

"So then we started tuning our setups to him. [Teammate] Martin [Truex Jr.] and him don't run the same setups. We can't. but we have the same race cars, which helps. All we did was adapt our stuff to Juan's driving style, and it's working well."

If there was one singular moment to point to as the key to Montoya's rise, that was it. "You can't tell the guy do this, do that. He's not a dog," Pattie said. "Adapting the setups to him was probably the turning point. Thinking outside the box. Getting out there a little bit. Stuff we'd never dream about running, we'd run it."

Clearly, Montoya has responded. He's scored top-10s in seven of his last nine outings, and barring a disaster will be in the Chase when it begins Sept. 20 in New Hampshire. In recent events, he's given up chances to win, preferring to drive conservatively and ensure his spot in NASCAR's playoff.

"I think we've found a lot of things in the car, how to make them better, how to make them comfortable for my driving style," he said. "Every person drives differently. You always hear like with Hendrick, Jeff [Gordon] wants it one way and Jimmie [Johnson] wants it another. It's the same thing with me. I wanted it a different way, and it seems to work."

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Of course, it's more about the cars. Trust, Pattie said, is ultimately why the relationship between the driver and his crew chief works. They're both numbers guys, Pattie said, a fact that enhances their ability to communicate. And being together for more than a year now has allowed Pattie to compile notes on each race track, giving him a baseline to work with every time they go back.

How much does that help? Glover points to Pocono, where Montoya was 38th and 40th last year. This season, he finished sixth and second. One by one, the No. 42 is eliminating the variables that have stood between them and Chase contention.

"We come back to a race track and run exactly the same stuff," Pattie said. "We didn't have enough notes, enough pit notes. You don't get good notes overnight. You go to school, you come back. And now that we have practices, each week we can turn this week into a better week next week.

"Those guys at Hendrick, that's what they do. Their notes are perfect, and they have four quality drivers. They get four times as many notes, and they build on that, and they're four times as fast. We'll get there. We're a ways away. We're plugging away."

Montoya's transformation from championship contender in F1 to championship contender in NASCAR has taken three years, about what the driver expected. He knew he wasn't going to be immediately successful, that getting comfortable in stock cars would take time. Still, that didn't stop some -- including the car owner -- from expecting this kind of performance last year, on the heels of that first win at Infineon.

"Chip said at the beginning of last year that we were going to make the Chase, and I said, 'What is he smoking?'" Montoya said. "This year, when we sat down in Chicago the year [before], we said, we have to make the Chase the year after, or let's be a contender for the Chase. So far, we're in a good position. But I would consider myself just a contender at this point. We still have a lot of racing to do, and you just have to be smart about it."

But make no mistake about it -- eventually, he expected to contend for titles in NASCAR, just as he has in other racing series. "Chip didn't hire me to come here and run 20th, and I didn't come here to think I was going to run 20th every week," he said. "I know what I can do with a race car, and I think Chip knows that, too. He gave me the right people and the right tools to do it, and that's what we're doing."

Yet for one of those people, Pattie, the success hasn't come without a personal price. He'll be the first to admit, he liked racing in the Nationwide Series -- golf on Sundays and Thursdays, and more at home to spend with his four children, all aged 12 or younger. Sprint Cup brings with it an entirely different lifestyle and set of demands.

"It's still hard, I'll be honest with you. It's still hard," he said. "I still have four children at home. They're all growing up. It's still difficult today, I'll be honest with you. It's hard. Like [two weeks ago], going to Pocono, racing on Monday, going to Dover, tire test Tuesday and Wednesday, came straight to [Watkins Glen].

"It's hard. But what are you going to do, go work at [a store]? I'd rather not do that. I'd rather go to races and try to perform at this level. I've had opportunities many times, I just didn't want to go."

What made the difference this time? Pattie said the loss of his father in 2007 had an influence. Glover believes Montoya's presence had an impact as well.

"I've known for a while that Brian could be a really good Cup crew chief. I've known that from working with him in the [Nationwide] Series. It's just a matter of, does he want to do it or not?" the team manager said. "I think if it would have been an ordinary Joe Blow that he'd had an opportunity to be a crew chief for, he might not have taken it. But he looked at Juan as an extreme talent, and he wanted to be a part of that."

As long as he's there, Pattie wants to make the most of it. The No. 42 team admittedly is points racing right now, aiming for a certain finishing position every week, just making sure they make the Chase. That plan ends after 26 races. The team will meet on the Tuesday after the Chase cutoff race at Richmond to discuss the final 10. They're building cars for the 2010 season. They're ready to contend this year and into the future.

"I don't want to be a one-hit wonder," Pattie said. "I don't want to come in here and possibly make the Chase in '09, and in '10 be 20th again. It's hard to sustain this level. But with what we're doing, I think we can."