A Retrospective on Juan Pablo Montoya’s NASCAR Career

At 48 years old, Juan Pablo Montoya isn’t looking to make some miraculous comeback to NASCAR.

At the same time, an opportunity from 23XI Racing to run the NASCAR Cup Series race at Watkins Glen on Sept. 15 was too good for him to pass up.

“Steve Lauletta (the president of 23XI Racing) called me and said, ‘Hey, would you be interested in doing Watkins [Glen]?’” Montoya said in an Aug. 8 article from Racer Magazine. “And I thought, ‘Oh, that would be fun.’ Honestly, it was pretty much that. I thought it would be pretty cool. … I thought it would be a fun thing to do, you know?

“I’m in the point in my career that, honestly, I’m not looking for a job. I’m not looking for anything. But an opportunity like this comes along, and I think I can still be really competitive and have a shot at it. So why not?”

It’s fitting that a single phone call brought Montoya back to NASCAR after a decade-plus since his last start in stock car racing. Back in 2006, in the midst of a brutal season in Formula 1, Montoya made a call to his former NTT IndyCar Series owner, Chip Ganassi. Montoya, frustrated by the politics of F1, was offered a ride in NASCAR.

A week later, Montoya signed with Ganassi and began his training toward a full-time ride in the Cup Series in 2007. The next six seasons saw Montoya become a punching bag and a punchline before ultimately punching above his weight.

Defying Conventional Wisdom

Open-wheel drivers dipping their toes in stock car racing wasn’t a new concept by any means, but few dove into the deep end of the pool before they learned how to swim like Montoya did.

The likes of Mario Andretti and AJ Foyt had picked up wins in the NASCAR Grand National Series in decades past, but neither had run a full-time season in the series. Tony Stewart won a NASCAR championship just a few years after an IRL title, but not without several dozen NASCAR Xfinity Series starts before his rookie year in Cup. 

For every driver that made the transition and flourished, there were even more that floundered or fizzled out.

His first start in a stock car was in the ARCA Menards Series at Talladega Superspeedway in October 2006. Montoya started on the front row, led nine laps and finished third after spending most of the day working with Steve Wallace. The driver from Colombia was hooked.

“This experience is unique,” Montoya said postrace in a SPEED interview. “I’ve never had so much fun in my life. It’s freaky, you’re always on the edge, but it’s so much fun.”

A little over a week later was Montoya’s second ARCA start at Iowa Speedway, where an accident with Wallace took him out of contention. Montoya picked up four more starts in the Xfinity Series, impressing again with three top-20 finishes before making his Cup debut at the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. 

Montoya at one point ran in the top 10 and was on pace for a top-20 finish late before a scary accident.

There’s no way around it, that’s a brutal end to your series debut.

Montoya’s trial run in NASCAR was a mixed bag for sure, but did it give people an idea of what his rookie season might look like? In some ways, yes. In others, he kept defying conventional wisdom for an open-wheel driver — and at times defied common knowledge as well.

“Don’t crash into each other”

Montoya’s first few weeks as a rookie in 2007 weren’t great: two DNFs in the Xfinity Series and some mediocre Cup performances.

The third weekend of the season, Cup was off as the Xfinity Series took its trip to Mexico City. There were several local stars and road course ringers in the field, but nobody drew the attention of the crowd or media like Montoya did that weekend. 

Chip Ganassi Racing put all its eggs in the Mexico City basket, bringing on Scott Pruett to be Montoya’s teammate and make the Nos. 41 and 42 Dodges the pre-race favorites. 

Montoya led the early portion of the race but handed the lead to Pruett after having to make an extra pit stop for a fuel line issue. Montoya moved through the field and found himself back in the top five with 10 to go.

“There’s never any team orders in our teams, but the one team order is don’t crash into each other,” Ganassi told ESPN with 10 laps to go.

As the duo came across the line with eight to go, it appeared a battle of road-course aces was about to commence.

“If I’m (crew chief) Brad Parrott, I’m telling him to just take his time here, you got plenty of time, don’t try to make it happen here too quickly,” broadcaster Andy Petree said as Pruett and Montoya headed toward turn 1.

Here it was, the showdown between the two best cars and drivers of the day. Let the racing masterclass begin.

In turn 1, Montoya made contact with Pruett, spun him around and inherited the lead.

Yikes. That’s an awkward way to pick up your first stock car win.

ESPN showed the likes of Ganassi, co-owner Felix Sabates and Parrott stewing. In the aftermath of Montoya holding off the field on a green-white-checkered finish, Parrott admitted he was upset that Pruett became collateral. 

Pruett described the move as “no good, low, nasty, dirty driving.” You know a driver is pissed when they use four whole synonyms to describe your driving.

Montoya celebrated his first win in just his 10th national series start, but it was clearly marred by the spin. Montoya said the wreck was obviously not intentional, but soon a perception started to develop.

“Let me be a bad guy”

Under even more scrutiny than he had when he entered NASCAR, Montoya didn’t do himself many favors over the next few months.

David Ragan, Tony Raines, Stewart and Ryan Newman were just some of the drivers Montoya butted heads with early in his Cup career.

At the Nextel Open at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Montoya made a move at the drop of the green flag that eventually took out himself and a half-dozen cars.

While his antics may have been new to NASCAR, the perception of Montoya as a firecracker behind the wheel was persistent in every form of racing he touched. Some fans hated it, but others liked a no-nonsense driver who wouldn’t let a field of veterans walk all over him.

“I don’t take any shit,” Montoya said in an interview with FOX Sports before the 2008 season. “I mean, I try to be a good guy, but we’re racing here. It comes down to you or them. You’re not getting paid to be nice. You’re getting paid to win.”

There were some highlights early in the season, but nothing compared to his win at Sonoma Raceway in June. Managing fuel mileage in the first road-course race for the Car of Tomorrow, Montoya tracked down and eventually passed Jamie McMurray with eight laps to go.

Montoya entered the race — which he started in 32nd — as the only driver who had run all 15 races that season without leading a lap. Dodge hadn’t been to victory lane since October the year prior. CGR’s last win was in 2002 when McMurray won at Charlotte in relief of Sterling Marlin.

His driving, and the calculations of crew chief Donnie Wingo, made Montoya the second foreign-born driver to win in the Cup Series. He did it in just 17 starts. Add NASCAR to the list of series and events (CART, the Indianapolis 500, F1, the Rolex 24) Montoya managed to win as a rookie.

The rest of his rookie season wasn’t too bad. He was the runner-up at the Brickyard 400 and clinched Rookie of the Year honors, but what most fans remember was his confrontation with Kevin Harvick at Watkins Glen.

There’s a lot of factors that go into why Montoya wasn’t winning any popularity contests with fans, but he really did try to be a good guy. Didn’t work out. 

His reaction? “Oh well!”

“For a whole year, I tried so hard to be a good guy,” Montoya told FOX. “But what the hell? They boo everybody here. Either you’re Dale Earnhardt Jr. or you’re booed. So let me be a bad guy.”

A Legitimate Title Contender

Montoya’s sophomore season in Cup was largely unremarkable: three top-10 finishes and a pole at Kansas Speedway that was disallowed due to illegal shocks. Off the track, his team saw a huge shake up. 

The organization would merge with Dale Earnhardt Inc. at year’s end, which meant that suddenly Montoya had Chevy motors under the hood courtesy of DEI and Richard Childress Racing.

Just 10 races into 2009, Montoya had matched his prior year’s top 10 total. He was just getting started. From the Southern 500 in May to the cutoff race at Richmond Raceway in September, Montoya averaged a finishing position of 11.5. 

Three years into his stock car racing career, Montoya had made the playofffs. He wasn’t done yet.

Montoya nabbed top fives in the first four races of the playoffs and was sitting 58 points behind series leader Jimmie Johnson, just waiting for him to slip up and make a mistake.

Then came Charlotte, where damage on a restart created a chain of events that saw him finish 35th. Two races later, a crash at Texas effectively eliminated whatever hopes remained of an upset of Hendrick Motorsports duo Mark Martin and Johnson.

Despite another bad run at Homestead, Montoya managed to finish eighth in the playoffs as the only playoff driver to go without a DNF all season.

Montoya was a longshot title contender entering 2010, but a title contender nonetheless.

A feast-or-famine year ultimately saw him miss out on the playoffs, but he did collect his second career win at Watkins Glen and had 14 top 10s.

Going Down in Flames

Montoya’s 2011 was a step back, but nothing to cause too much concern. The bottom came in 2012, and the beginning of the end can be pinpointed to lap 160 of the Daytona 500.

Montoya, damaged from an earlier accident, spun in turn 3 under caution and hit one of the jet engine-equipped blowers at the top of the banking.

There’s something sad about this now over a decade later. If you ask fans for the first Montoya memory they have, it’s probably this. Not winning the Indy 500, an IndyCar title or the Monaco Grand Prix. Montoya basically became the butt of a joke for the remaining two years of his NASCAR career.

In defense of those poking fun at Montoya, there wasn’t much he did to change the subject. He finished on the lead lap just 13 times in 2012. A runner-up finish at Dover Motor Speedway in 2013 — an overall solid year for Montoya — was as close as he would come to a win again in his full-time Cup career. 

In August of that year, Earnhardt Ganassi Racing told Montoya it would not be renewing his contract. He got an offer from Furniture Row Racing to stay in the Cup Series, but he ultimately went back to open wheel with an IndyCar ride from Team Penske.

Montoya made a pair of starts for Penske in a Cup car in 2014. His last race was on July 27, finishing 23rd in the Brickyard 400.

In a weird way, one of the best compliments you can give to Montoya is that his six seasons in NASCAR was a blip on the radar of what was an unbelievable career.

Winning in it, even if it was just twice, added to a long list of accomplishments.

Montoya followed up his time in NASCAR with a second career Indy 500 win in 2015, then won an IMSA SportsCar title in 2019.

Only two other drivers — Andretti and Dan Gurney — can say they’ve won races in IndyCar, F1, NASCAR and SportsCar racing.

He didn’t think of NASCAR as a step down from F1, more of a step toward a better life for himself and a new challenge in his racing career. He actually got along with drivers better than I thought, in part because veterans like Martin and Stewart had helped him make the transition to NASCAR.

While some made their mind up about the Colombian driver before he ever turned a lap in NASCAR, some fans grew to like Montoya for his no-nonsense approach. He didn’t put up with any mess, be it from opposition or his own team. He had a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde driving style, sometimes displaying brilliance and sometimes being self-destructive.

Montoya was ahead of the curb for NASCAR as far as international appeal. Before the likes of Mexico’s Daniel Suarez or New Zealand’s Shane van Gisbergen became Cup winners, Montoya and Australia’s Marcos Ambrose were growing the brand by taking a leap into American stock car racing.

In retrospect, Montoya might have been underappreciated by NASCAR and its fans, be it as a driver, as a personality or as an attraction.

With a banner weekend at Watkins Glen, maybe the 48-year-old can prove he still is all of the above.