Hard to see the big picture if little one means so much

INDIANAPOLIS -- As the late-afternoon sun cast long shadows across the frontstretch at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the only issue still in question seemed to be the final margin of victory. Juan Montoya led more laps on one afternoon than he had in his entire NASCAR career to that point, had the field covered by more than five seconds, was dominating at the Brickyard in a fashion uncannily similar to his rout at the Indianapolis 500 nine years earlier. He even drove a car featuring the same paint scheme, red with yellow lightning bolts running down each side.

Frustration for 42

Juan Montoya was frustrated with the speeding penalty, but he realized after the race that his focus is on the Chase.

• Video: Post-Race Reactions

"It actually reminded me of the last time I led here," Montoya said, referring to that breakthrough Indy 500 win in 2000, where he led 167 of 200 laps. "It was kind of easy. I was cruising. I was stupid fast."

Nobody could catch him. Until NASCAR did.

A pit-road speeding penalty on a green-flag stop with 35 laps remaining took Sunday's best car out of the running, and left a plainly crestfallen Montoya to finish in 11th place. After the race, NASCAR officials shared the numbers from their computerized timing system that showed exactly how far over the limit Montoya had been. But there was no consoling the Colombian in the immediate aftermath, when his distaste for the ruling and his despondency over the outcome came through loud and clear over team radio.

"Dude, I guarantee you," he told crew chief Brian Pattie, "I swear on my children and my wife I was not speeding ... I can't believe they did this to me. Because I swear on anybody, I was not speeding."

According to NASCAR, though, he was. Sprint Cup director John Darby said that NASCAR had eight speed zones set up along the length of the Indianapolis pit road, and that Montoya had tripped not one, but two of them. The No. 42 car was clocked at 60.06 mph in the second zone, and 60.11 mph in the fourth zone -- exceeding not only the 55 mph pit-road speed limit, but also the 5 mph grace buffer that NASCAR gives teams on top of that. Although Montoya said he saw green lights on his dash gauges indicating that he was inside acceptable RPM limits, such setups are team creations that serve as a guideline, and are not linked into NASCAR's timing system.

"This system came at the request of the competitors," Darby said, standing on the steps of the NASCAR hauler, holding a wad of paper that included the day's pit-road speed numbers. "We used to do it with handheld stopwatches way back when, and the garage insisted it wasn't accurate enough, it wasn't thorough enough, it wasn't every car in every box, which is why we installed the electronic timing of pit road to even begin with." (Continued)