Montoya looking for redemption at Indy

The word spread around Talladega Superspeedway in April like wildfire: Goodyear had just completed a two-day tire test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway with 13 teams, and Juan Pablo Montoya was the class of the field. By a considerable margin.

That shouldn't have been a surprise, at least not considering the way Montoya ran at Indy last year. He had the field covered for 116 laps, but a speeding penalty on the final pit stop snatched a certain victory away and dropped him to an 11th-place finish.

So of course crew chief Brian Pattie built another fast race car to bring back to the track that most certainly owes the No. 42 team.

Right?

Wrong, said Pattie.

"You're never owed anything," Pattie said this week. "We unfortunately chose to give one away. That's not the track's fault. The track doesn't owe us."

For starters, a victory Sunday at the Brickyard 400 would give team owner Chip Ganassi a so-called "triple crown" with victories in the Daytona 500, the Indianapolis 500 and the Brickyard 400. Jamie McMurray gave him the Daytona victory, and Dario Franchitti won the Indy 500.

Should Ganassi get the NASCAR race on Sunday, he'd be the first owner to win all three races in the same season. It's also been 10 years since Montoya won the Indy 500 for Ganassi, and Montoya's seeking to become the first driver to win both the IndyCar and NASCAR races at the Brickyard.

But more important, it would salvage what's been a miserable season for the No. 42 team.

Fresh off a fairly trouble-free season that saw Montoya earn his first berth in the Chase, this year has been a long headache. He's scored eight top-10 finishes in 19 races, but he also has six DNFs (four crashes, a parts failure and a blown engine). This is why Montoya sits 21st in the standings and his team has all but thrown in the towel.

"Chances are slim-to-none [the Chase] will happen," Pattie said. "Jimmie Johnson couldn't come out of this hole. We'd have to average a third-place finish for the next seven races."

They know they've got the cars to do it; they just haven't had the luck. Part of that is because of how the season started – a blown motor at California and a wreck with McMurray at Las Vegas put the team in a hole that, Pattie said, "changed the entire mindset."

Then came the mistakes: The driver has not always been focused, something isn't right on the setup, the pit crew hasn't been flawless. The list goes on and on, and when Pattie was told before the race two weeks ago at Chicago that garage gossip was that the "42 will be tough to be beat – if they can finish," he almost blew a gasket.

"I don't need to be told that," he said. "I live that every week. We need to stop making mistakes. Period."

The troubling part is that Montoya is actually running better now than last year. He's led 220 laps this season, compared to just 11 at this point last season. Montoya has led laps in 10 races this season, one more than points leader Kevin Harvick.

The improvements can only be attributed to better race cars and more speed. Montoya just doesn't have the finishes to show for it.

But this weekend is expected to be a big one, especially considering how strong the 42 looked at the tire test. Asked what changes he made since then, Pattie declined to tip his hand.

"Setup-wise, nothing," he said. "But we detailed it out a pretty good bit."

What's that mean?

"You'll see,'' he promised.

He better hope so. Pattie and Montoya need a win, badly, and Indy would be the perfect place to cure many of their current ailments.

Here's what else will be talked about this weekend in Indianapolis:

1. Will there be fireworks again this weekend between Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski?

Doubtful, as both drivers got their hands slapped this week by NASCAR, which put both drivers on probation for the remainder of the season for their respective roles in an ongoing feud that resurfaced in last weekend's Nationwide race.

Still, they'll have two opportunities to tangle in Indianapolis, first in Saturday night's Nationwide Race at O'Reilly Raceway Park and then in Sunday's main event at The Brickyard. But after NASCAR scolded both for their last-lap antics last weekend in St. Louis, the strong bet is that the two will avoid each other like the plague, at least for appearances sake.

That's a shame, too.

When race fans pine for the good 'ol days, I've always assumed it's the hard racing, the personality conflicts and the rivalries that they miss the most. Only now that they've got a throwback feud right in front of them, they don't seem to be embracing it.

It used to be the bulk of what I heard was "the racing is so boring" or "the drivers are too vanilla." So now you've got Edwards and Keselowski mixing it up in spectacular fashion, and the cry has shifted to "Carl Edwards is out of control!" and "Those drivers need to be parked!"

Make up your mind, people.

Watching for what might happen next between these two drivers is half the fun, and even if they never trade even a speckle of paint, anytime their cars get close, the anticipation builds. So it's puzzling that fans seem to be calling for a NASCAR-ordered cease fire.

'Tis true that Edwards has executed his "paybacks" this season with all the delicacy of a bull in a china shop. But Keselowski isn't faultless, either.

And unless either is your personal favorite driver, why bother taking sides? Just sit back and enjoy the show – assuming NASCAR lets it play out.

2. It's time for Denny Hamlin to step it up, again:

Hamlin and his Joe Gibbs Racing team were as surprised as everyone else earlier this season when the No. 11 car rolled to a career-high five early wins. Not because they didn't think they had all those trips to victory lane in them, but because crew chief Mike Ford was certain his best cars wouldn't debut until Indianapolis and beyond.

Well, here we are, and Hamlin heads into Sunday's race in a bit of a lull. He's no longer the hottest driver in the Sprint Cup Series, and his outspokenness toward NASCAR policy and procedure has put a bull's-eye on his back as a driver who needs to put his money where his mouth is.

Working in Hamlin's favor is Ford's confidence in his upcoming cars, his history at the race track – Ford guided Bill Elliott to a 2002 Brickyard victory – and Hamlin's own experiences at the famed raceway.

His history at the track is decent: Hamlin finished 10th in his 2006 debut, and led 26 laps before finishing third in the 2008 Goodyear-debacle race. His only two poor finishes were in 2007, when a speeding penalty and running out of fuel led to a 22nd-place finish, and last year, when his drive shaft broke as he exited pit road following the first stop of the race.

Hamlin, who hasn't won in more than a month and has one top-10 in his last four races, wants to get back on the roll he had earlier this season and start working closer to his first career Cup title.

"I think we've shown at Indy that we have what it takes to win, and the team really builds great cars for this track," he said. "To win here you need the car, the driver and the crew all at their best, and then have a lot of things go your way.

"If we take the issues that have hurt us here – we had motor trouble, a speeding penalty and then more mechanical problems last season – if you take those issues away, there is no reason we can't run up front."

3. This week for Dale Earnhardt Jr. is …

A brand new race car.

The Hendrick Motorsports team is bringing a brand new chassis to the Brickyard. And in brand new, it means never been tested or raced before.

It's a curious move because Earnhardt is in a precarious position: He's 13th in the standings with only seven races left to plant himself inside the top 12 in time to make the Chase. He currently trails 12th-place driver Clint Bowyer by 15 points.

That's not a lot of time for Earnhardt and crew chief Lance McGrew to mess around, and for their sake their No. 88 Chevrolet better be good on Sunday or else they'll certainly hear it from an anxious Junior Nation.

McGrew said the car is better than last year's, which qualified third and ran inside the top 10 before an engine failure ended his day.

"I think some of the stuff we ran at Indy last year, we now have better stuff," McGrew said. "We had a car capable of finishing in the top five but didn't end up with the finish. This season we've managed to run up front and stay up front when we've had cars capable of doing so and doing it pretty consistently."

No other driver is being watched with the same focus as Earnhardt, who has the entire Hendrick organization trying to get him in the Chase. Every decision will be second-guessed from here on out, and his every on-track move will be scrutinized.

4. Next up, ESPN:

The third segment of NASCAR's television schedule begins this weekend when ESPN takes over coverage of the Sprint Cup Series and attempts to stop the ratings slide.

In a year of constant fan consternation with the networks, the announcers, the commercial breaks, the missed action and the lack of post-race follow-up, ESPN, so often criticized in the past, may actually be embraced by race fans.

And before its coverage has even started, the network has already done something right, committing to more post-race coverage. ESPN plans to expand its Sunday "SportsCenter" to include more post-race interviews, much the same way it does with NFL games.

ESPN is chalking up the ability to spend more time on NASCAR to the earlier start times this season, but regardless of the reasoning, the decision to stick with post-race – the time when drivers show true emotion and reaction – is solid.

"This really is an expanded philosophy for us," said Julie Sobieski, ESPN vice president of programming and acquisitions. "[There's] a component of it that will go back to the racetrack and give us a platform that we can count on week in and week out to tie a bow on the NASCAR coverage in the same way we do other big events."

The extra coverage will depend on what time the race ends, but either way, NASCAR will now become a staple of Sunday editions of "SportsCenter" and that means exposing the sport to more traditional "stick-and-ball" fans.

That was an element that has lacked tremendously this season, particularly when Fox's post-race coverage ran short following a long race at Phoenix. That network reacted to harsh criticism by planning an online post-race show the very next week, but that idea was shot down by Turner, which owns most of the online rights to NASCAR.

Turner, which broadcast the last six races on TNT and used NASCAR.com for much of its post-race coverage, also had its struggles.

Some fans are already upset with ESPN's decision to shift the bulk of its coverage from ABC to cable; ABC had 11 races last year to ESPN's six, but this year ESPN will carry 14 to ABC's three. But NASCAR and the network believes this will be better in the long run – it's easier to sell advertising at ESPN, and the network draws better numbers and younger audiences – and ESPN historically (save for the LeBron James fiasco) produces good broadcasts.

So we'll be watching Sunday to see what its got. And ESPN should be on notice: If fans don't like the product, the network will certainly hear from them.