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Juan Pablo Montoya knows the No. 42 NASCAR Sprint Cup team has to step it up this season

Away from the track, Juan Pablo Montoya doesn't get too worked up.

Asked what it will take to have a breakout year in 2011 or what it will take to make the Chase or what he thinks when he's wrecked by a teammate, he shrugs.

"It's racing," he says. "It's what happens."

He's not even all that upset about Indianapolis, the race he had in the bag the last two seasons only to see victory snatched away thanks to mistakes late in both races.

"It's probably going to happen again," he said matter-of-factly on Monday as the NASCAR Sprint Media Tour got under way. "It just happens."

But there is a track that gets under Montoya's skin, a place that disappoints him more than any other - Infineon Raceway at Sonoma, Calif.

It's a strange pick since Sonoma is the site of Montoya's first Sprint Cup win in 2007. In fact, his average finish there of 5.8 over four races is by far his best average finish at any track.

But Montoya chalks the 2007 win up to "fuel mileage." And his other three finishes - all top 10s - aren't good enough for a driver who believes he should excel even more on NASCAR's two road courses but "just can't perform there for some reason."

Montoya's only other Cup win came in 2010 at the other road course at Watkins Glen. It came in a year that saw him overshadowed by his teammate at Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing, Jamie McMurray.

McMurray -- who rejoined EGR last year after a lackluster stint at Roush Fenway -- quickly established himself as the team's bright spot by winning not only the Daytona 500 but NASCAR's second most prestigious race as well - the Brickyard race at Indianapolis, the one that slipped through Montoya's grasp.

Winning at Daytona was huge, he said, but showing he could win somewhere other than a restrictor-plate track like Daytona or Talladega was even bigger, he said.

"The Daytona 500 is the race you want to win if you're in NASCAR," but winning at Indianapolis was special, he said.

"Indy was really gratifying, to be able to win at an intermediate track," said McMurray, who followed up that win with a victory at Charlotte in October but missed out of the Chase.

He's said he's not very concerned about how or if NASCAR changes the way Chase drivers are picked. Reports have indicated that NASCAR might pick the top 10 drivers in points and two more drivers with the most wins.

Such a format would have put McMurray in the Chase last year - prompting some to call the possible change "The McMurray Rule" - but McMurray isn't all that upset about missing the Chase last year.

After all, he said, he won the two biggest races of the year.

"There's a lot of guys who made the Chase last year who would have traded with me in a heartbeat." McMurray said.

Montoya might be one of them, after a season in which the breaks seemed to fall McMurray's way but didn't fall for Montoya.

Montoya started the season with two 37^th-place finishes in the first three races, then went through a nine-race stretch in which he racked up six DNFs thanks to crashes and mechanical failures. At that point, the season went poof.

"The hole was so big to get out of," he said. "You just have to finish with a little luck and that's all we can do."

The No. 42 team also has to step it up on pit road and with its race strategy, he admitted. It was a late pit-stop decision to take four tires instead of two that cost him his first-ever NASCAR win on an oval course at Indianapolis.

That was a call made by his crew chief, Brian Pattie, who returns for another season with Montoya and a relationship that's been put to the test.

"We've been through good times and bad times," Montoya said. "It's easy to have a good relationship when things are going great and smooth. It's when you go through bad times that your relationship is really going to be tested.

Enduring the long, difficult season "was hard at the beginning but at the end of the day we're both here for the same thing. We're both here to win races," he said.

(source)