“We got three cars going for it on the lead lap with a couple of hours to go with very talented drivers putting on a fantastic show,” the American said, “That’s what this is all about. When you get down to the very last stages of the race and be doing that, it says a lot about the series and the teams with the way they prep the cars and race them. This is no small feat getting everything going for this race between the people and the cars and all the preparation. It’s just fantastic. I can’t say enough for all the participants and everybody that came and saw it.”
For Montoya, the Rolex 24 triumph made him the first driver in history to win a 24-hour race at
Daytona, the Indianapolis 500, a
Formula One race and a Champ Car or IndyCar championship. The legendary
Mario Andretti also owns a sportscar victory in addition to winning at Indy, in
F1 and open-wheel championships, but his Daytona sportscar win came in the 1972 six-hour event. It was Montoya’s first appearance in the Rolex 24, the Colombian having also won the Indianapolis 500 at his first and only appearance in 2000. He also claimed the 1999 Champ Car World Series title as a rookie. Like Dan Wheldon last year, JPM won his first Grand-AM race with the Ganassi operation, and now heads into the 2007 Nextel Cup campaign on a high.
“It was pretty tough,” Montoya said, “My last stint running with Angelelli and Dalziel, they were going at it really hard. It made my life pretty miserable. It got to a point when I would run behind them, I was third in the group, and I was like ‘I’m not going to hop into that’. We led 18 or 20 hours up to that point. I managed to catch up to them. I knew our fuel mileage was better than them. You want to try to get ahead of them but at the same time you don’t want to screw up the race. There was a fine line. But it was a good way to start the year with Chip.”
![The Pruett/Montoya/Duran #01 Ganassi Riley-Lexus takes the Rolex 24 chequer at Daytona [pic credit: Grand-Am.com]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/286129.jpg)
