Notes: Montoya having fast cars, bad luck this season

AVONDALE, Ariz. -- Juan Montoya has had fast cars and believes that the No. 42 is "a top-five team, easily." He has led five of the seven races this season, including Saturday night at Phoenix International Raceway.

With plenty of bad luck, though, Montoya finished 26th or worse in four of the first six races. Maybe things are getting better.

Montoya led four times for 104 laps at Phoenix and settled for a fifth-place finish. That pushed him up four spots to 21st in the Cup Series points.

After making the Chase last year, Montoya this season has already had an engine failure, a tire failure, made contact with teammate Jamie McMurray in one race and gotten caught up in a multi-car accident in another.

"We've run in the top five every week. We're there," Montoya said. "But we had blown tires last [race]. The week before something else happened; they wrecked in front of us. ... There is always something. Blown motors. Everything that can go wrong has gone wrong so far."

While Montoya is well below the top 12 in points, there are 19 races left until the Chase. He said the bright side is that the problems aren't because the team is slow.

"I don't even know where we are in points, to be honest. I don't even look," Montoya said. "You take it race by race, score as many points as you can and see what happens. It's completely out of our control. We come here and they wreck and we have nowhere to go. We haven't really made a mistake ourselves to say this one is on us yet. I don't feel we have." (Continued)