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The Way It Is: Why NASCAR sets the standard.

Monday, 17th September 2007

With open-wheel racing in disarray, Gordon Kirby reveals the pleasure former single-seater ace Juan Montoya gets from NASCAR.

These should be sobering times for open-wheel or formula car racing around the world. We all know the web of problems shrouding IRL and Champ Car and, of course, Formula 1 has wilfully plunged itself into perhaps the most ego and greed-laden Machiavellian episode in the chequered history of the most exalted of racing categories.

The Stepneygate saga has exposed F1 at its worst and, with the story set to run and run, it’s impossible to estimate how much damage will be done to the FIA’s world championship.

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Meanwhile, NASCAR continues to roll along. Despite soft TV ratings, weak crowds at some races, the much-criticised transition to the Car of Tomorrow, and the arrival of Toyota, the France family’s leviathan of American motor racing remains in rude health as the Nextel Cup series enters its Chase for the Cup play-off season.

As everyone knows, former F1 and CART superstar Juan Pablo Montoya is the poster boy for NASCAR’s new global expansion, with Dario Franchitti and Jacques Villeneuve poised to follow his tracks. Montoya’s move from F1 to Chip Ganassi’s Cup team was a first for racing and his pair of NASCAR wins to date - in a Busch race in Mexico City and Cup race at Infineon Raceway - have paid off for Ganassi, his sponsors and NASCAR as a whole. For his part, Montoya couldn’t be happier with his move into the 850 hp, 3,400 pound beasts.

“I’m having fun,” Juan commented in New Hampshire last weekend. “You get to race every week. The races are awesome and the cars are a handful. It makes it interesting. I wouldn’t change it for anything.”

Montoya loves the pure pleasure of racing in NASCAR.

“It’s good because you’re always racing,” he said. “In open-wheel you get frustrated because you can’t pass people. Here, you can, and if you don’t do it, you can try again and try again, and you will pass him. There are always different patterns and grooves, and every week it’s a different track and a different set-up.”

Juan readily admits there are politics in NASCAR, but nothing like Formula 1.

“There are some politics, but I think it’s a well-balanced environment,” he remarked.

The most difficult adjustment Montoya has had to make is not in his driving but in learning to live with being out to lunch some weekends.

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