Diary: Juan Pablo Montoya on win: 'It feels fantastic'
Juan Pablo Montoya — the 2000 Indianapolis 500 winner who returned to open-wheel racing after seven years in NASCAR — shares his insights on and off the track with Paste BN Sports during the season. Montoya, 38, spoke with Jeff Olson after Montoya's first open-wheel victory since 2000. He won at Pocono Raceway, a 500-mile endurance race where his patience and knowledge of the layout paid off. He shares his experience just hours after crossing the finish line.
I'm really happy right now. Really, really happy.
If you're wondering why, there's a pretty simple explanation. We won today in the Verizon IndyCar Series for the first time since I left this form of racing to go to Formula One in 2000 (and later NASCAR). So it's been 14 years since I've won a race like this, and I must say it feels fantastic.
But it isn't my accomplishment alone. It belongs to an entire group of people who help build and work on these cars, and to the guys who create the strategy and do the heavy -- and fast -- lifting on my pit stops, and to my teammates, Helio Castroneves and Will Power, who also were fast Sunday and scored top-10 finishes.
I knew the No. 2 PPG Team Penske Chevrolet was going to be good at Pocono Raceway during the first practice, but it got even better after that. During qualifying Saturday, we went out and set a track record of 223.871 mph to win the pole. That's when I knew we had a very serious shot to win the race.
And during the race, I never lifted. That's just astonishing. These cars are so fast around Pocono's 2.5-mile 'Tricky Triangle', it's hard to describe. When it was green, I never did anything but mash the throttle to the floorboard. I've never done that at Pocono.
A lot of people have been asking me if my experience at Pocono in NASCAR Sprint Cup races helped me in this race. I'm honestly not sure. The pole speed for a Cup race at Pocono earlier this year was 181.415. That's a difference of more than 42 mph. I'm not sure if I can explain the difference in terms that people who haven't driven both types of cars would understand.
It was one of those weekends when everything we did went right. It happens to drivers and their teams sometimes. Everything was perfect from the moment we took the car off the trailer. From the first practice to qualifying to the race. It was spotless, and then we closed it out. That's such a good feeling.
I've spent the last few hours thanking everybody involved in this: team owner Roger Penske, who gave me a wonderful opportunity; Tim Cindric, president of Penske Racing; my strategist, Jon Bouslog; my lead engineer, Brian Campe; and Ron Ruzewski, my technical adviser.
Now we want to keep this thing going next weekend at Iowa Speedway. It was one of the first tracks I tested on when I decided to move from Formula One to NASCAR, and I love the challenge it presents. It's small -- just 7/8ths of a mile -- but it's also fast. So we go from one of the biggest ovals to one of the smallest in just a few days. The one thing they have in common is speed.
We seem to have the speed thing figured out, but Iowa is different. We run the road-course wings there, not the oval wings, so this will be the first time I've raced in that configuration on a short oval. We tested there earlier this season and everything went well, so I'm looking forward to keeping this momentum going.
I had no idea how long it would take me to start winning races again in IndyCar. Or, to be honest, if I would win races again in IndyCar. This just goes to show that if you do the best job you possibly can, good things will come to you.
We all should have that motto. Do the best you can. It will happen.
Follow Olson on Twitter @jeffolson77