JUAN PABLO MONTOYA (No. 42 Wrigley’s Big Red Slim Pack Dodge):
“The lap was good. Yesterday when we were doing the qualifying runs, we made a mistake on the setup, and we had the wrong wedge on the car. It was a handful. I went out and scrubbed tires around a 50.9, put stickers on and couldn’t break 51 for practice, so it was a little frustrating. Today we had a good clean lap, but it was hard because actually the car felt bad. It felt like I could maybe run one or two more tenths out of the car, and when you don’t, it’s a little frustrating.”
(How much of a blessing is it to go out early?):
“It always helps, always helps, but it’s a draw every week. Some weeks it’s good to be late, some weeks it’s good to be early. This week it was good to be early, and we got a pretty decent draw. Some weeks you get a horrible draw, but this is how racing goes. Every week changes, but that is what makes it interesting.”
(Do you still enjoy coming back here?):
“Yeah, it’s always cool. Its good memories, I have won the Indy 500 here, my last Formula One race was here, and I finished second last year. So, there are a lot of cool things to be around here, so it’s pretty cool.” (Do you know the track really well?): “It’s four corners; it’s not like you are looking at 50 corners, and they are pretty similar at both ends. I don’t know, I like the place. I think I’ve got it figured out, but I guess because I think I’ve got in figured out, it looks pretty simple to me.”
(You’ve driven a F1, NASCAR, and IndyCar, how do you rank them in your mind?):
“I don’t think I want to answer that question. Each one is completely different. The Indy 500 has got a lot of history behind it, I love driving stock cars, Formula One was cool to drive the cars the racing here, when the racing wasn’t that great. Each one has its own thing, I really happy right now that I’m in NASCAR.”
(Who are the toughest three drivers?):
“I don’t know. In Formula One, you have to say Schumacher. Here, you have Tony (Stewart), Jeff (Gordon) and Jimmie (Johnson). I ! ran against Sam (Hornish Jr.), Jimmy Vasser and all those guys when I ran the Indy 500. It’s pretty interesting.”
(Have you talked to Dario Franchitti about losing his ride?):
“I haven’t really talked to him too much. He’s been in his thing. I’ve been in my thing. It’s hard, what do you want me to say? I’m really sorry for what happened to him, but it’s that simple. I think if Chip didn’t do that, two years from now or a year from now we would all be looking for jobs. I think it was needed, and you can see as soon as that change, the performance of the team started getting better. Not that it’s Dario’s fault; it’s just that we had money for two cars, not three cars.”
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