At Indy, heartbreak goes hand-in-hand with joy

INDIANAPOLIS -- The red and white car sat in the rear of the garage area, its hood up, its right-rear corner split open like a used candy wrapper. The side of the vehicle was so marked up that it was difficult to make out the 42. Crewmen with saws cut away jagged pieces of sheet metal, and then rolled the crippled Chevrolet into the upper bay of the transporter for the journey home. The roar of competition still emanated from the asphalt at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but Juan Montoya's effort was finished early.

From great to tragic

With 11 laps remaining, Juan Montoya went from race contender to a heap of scrap metal.

• Watch the crash

Again. One year after a pit-road speeding penalty scuttled a victory that seemed a near-certainty, a crash in traffic Sunday left Montoya and crew chief Brian Pattie lugging a truckload of what-ifs back to Charlotte along with their wrecked race car. He wasn't quite as dominant as he was last season, when he led 116 laps and enjoyed a five-second lead on the field before a speeding violation relegated him to 11th place. But Montoya was still plenty good enough, pacing a race-high 86 circuits Sunday until everything went wrong following a late pit stop when Montoya took four tires, and six others took two.

The results were disastrous. Montoya struggled to gain any ground in the dirty air, and coming off Turn 4 slapped the outside wall with 11 laps remaining. Trying to immediately get to pit road, he collected the vehicle of Dale Earnhardt Jr., and coasted into the garage area with a totaled race car that would eventually be credited with a 32nd-place result. Montoya left without comment, and was likely on an airplane home when Earnhardt Ganassi teammate Jamie McMurray hoisted the winged, golden brick trophy in Victory Lane.

"We didn't have the fastest car," McMurray said on the winner's traditional pace-car lap around the track. "The 42 had the fastest car."

That had to offer little solace to Montoya, snake bitten for a second consecutive year. And yet, Indianapolis is a place that seems to breed these endlessly frustrating quests, near-quixotic pursuits that move almost seamlessly from one year into another, weaving a fiber of disappointment and angst. Time and time again we've seen it, whether it's Michael Andretti chasing for 16 years an Indianapolis 500 victory that would never come, or Rusty Wallace finishing as Brickyard runner-up three times, or drivers like Lloyd Ruby and Gary Bettenhausen coming to the corner of 16th Street and Georgetown road again and again each May and never getting to taste the winner's swig of milk.

Oh it's a beautiful place, all right, steeped in tradition and history, and the sight of its green-glass pagoda tower rising up from the landscape is enough to give any race fan chills. But all the goose-bump moments belie the fact that Indianapolis can be a terribly cruel place, a track that has teased and tantalized some of the world's greatest drivers to the point where goals morph into flat-out obsessions. Tony Stewart surely experienced that for the 11 years he chased Indianapolis glory across two different series before his emotional breakthrough in 2005. Others like Paul Tracy and Mark Martin and even Mario Andretti -- who in 29 attempts never earned a second Indy 500 title to go with the one he won in 1969 -- can surely relate.

It can build you up, break you down, and spit you out. No question the No. 42 team experienced that this year, after raising eyebrows with their speed at a Goodyear tire test here in April, bringing the same car back to the Brickyard, and pacing the weekend's first two practices before winning the pole. No wonder Montoya climbed out of his wrecked race car and immediately skipped town. No wonder Pattie, normally one of the most accessible crew chiefs in the Cup garage area, issued only a three-sentence statement through a public relations representative that let you know he was beating himself up.

"Bad call. Crew chief error," he said. "We should have taken two tires." (Continued)