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Juan Montoya likely saw his chances of winning NASCAR’s Chase for the championship evaporate on a frustrating Saturday night at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. A series of mishaps sent him to a 35th-place finish, dropping him from third to sixth in the standings.
Maybe, but his hopes of becoming the first foreign-born driver to win the Cup title likely ended during a restart early in the race when he nudged into the back of Clint Bowyer. Mark Martin then slammed into Montoya’s right rear quarter panel, sending Montoya slipping through the field.
Montoya trails Johnson by 195 points heading into next week’s race at Martinsville. The Canadian Press
When he first exited the car, he was calm in his post-race analysis with team manager Tony Glover. And he was matter-of-fact in discussing what had happened, and what it meant.
“They all accelerated and they all checked up—every time the No. 24 [Jeff Gordon] restarted it was the same thing—I checked up and somebody didn’t slow down and just ripped off the whole rear of the car,” Montoya said. “Just one of those deals. It is what it is and you’ve just got to move on.”
It was only when he was asked if a split-second occurrence on a single restart had become his team’s worst-case scenario that Montoya seemed to be annoyed.
“[The worst-case scenario] for what?” Montoya said. “We made the Chase and up until [Saturday] we had four top-fives in a row and what’s bad about it, you know what I mean? It’s racing. If you’re expecting to have 10 clean races then you’re dreaming.
“We knew it could happen and here, always the restarts are an issue. I managed to slow down and I just got hit from behind. It happens.”
Montoya acknowledged what his team’s done so far and said he didn’t expect that to change.
“Everybody on this car [Saturday] was pretty impressive,” Montoya said. “We had one of our fastest cars. Not much we can do. We worked as hard as we could and we did all that we thought was possible and [Saturday] the best we could do was 35th.
“We were actually surprised. Everybody on the team is doing such a good job that even [Saturday] we had a faster car than [Johnson]. So, it happens. It’s one of those racing things that will happen and we’ve just got to move on.” NASCAR
