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Team extreme: Teammates Jamie McMurray, Juan Pablo Montoya differ on and off track

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Jamie McMurray and Juan Pablo Montoya aren’t the best of friends but as teammates they realize the need to work together.

Sometimes it seems that they do. Sometimes not so much.

McMurray, a Midwestern Late Model racer, and Montoya, a Colombian who competed in IndyCar and Formula One, have taken different paths to drive for team owner Chip Ganassi. That certainly has created a strange dynamic.

They insist they get along, but on the track they have not always looked like teammates – with McMurray getting turned by Montoya at Las Vegas last ssason and then not working well together during the Budweiser Shootout on Saturday night.

So do they like each other or not?

“We get along really well,” Montoya said. “We really don’t hang out too much but we have a very good working relationship. That’s what I would call it. We just don’t have much in common to tell you the truth.

“I’m into the windsurfing, the golf, and flying the [remote-control] planes, he’s into go-karts.”

Last year in their first as teammates, McMurray won three races – including the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard 400 – while Montoya won at Watkins Glen.

At Indianapolis, it appeared as if Montoya was on his way to the win until he took four tires during a pit stop and then crashed while trying to rally through the field. McMurray won that race – and while the win went to a Ganassi car, Montoya still believes it easily could have been two wins apiece last year.

“Daytona with the restrictor plate is a lot of luck, I think in Charlotte he had everybody covered and in Indy I had everybody covered,” Montoya said. “You know history would have been very different. It is what it is. I think Indy we handed it to him to tell you the truth. But its great overall for the team, four wins.”

Chatting with reporters at a casual breakfast recently, McMurray and Montoya each sat at a table giving their opinion of the Budweiser Shootout the night before and – when asked how the other one raced – weren’t exactly complimentary.

McMurray said Montoya wasn’t executing the push in the two-car draft exactly right and that limited the air flow through his car’s grille. Montoya said he actually had a different cooling system that didn’t allow him to run his engine as hot as McMurray.

“Juan, when we were talking about it before, he kept trying to push [and his way] there was no air getting to the radiator and all the other guys were pushing [another way],” McMurray said matter-of-factly. “He will tell you different, but that’s what I think. We tried to talk, but it’s like talking to a wall.”

About 10 minutes later, Montoya gave his side: “I would push water out at 260 degrees, he would push water out at 300. It’s very easy to say, ‘Oh, my technique was better’ but when you can run 40 degrees hotter, anybody’s technique is better. … That’s like putting tires on the last stop and somebody doesn’t and saying, ‘Oh, my technique when I ran around the outside of somebody was so good.’

“My red light was set up for 245 [degrees], his red light was set up at 280. It’s kind of stupid to say that technique was one thing or another.”

Montoya and McMurray will have the same cooling system for the Daytona 500.

“When they were trying to work together, there was a little issue with the cars,” team owner Chip Ganassi said.

Ganassi said the relationship between the two teammates has improved since the beginning of last year but the teams still need to work better together.

“I don’t know when I will get through their heads … right now, both of those teams, both of those drivers, both of those crew chiefs need to be communicating more,” Ganassi said.

“When they start finishing 1-2 in the races, then I’ll let them start communicating less. Until that happens, they need to communicate more.”

McMurray said prior to the Budweiser Shootout that the teams are working together and he and Montoya get along well.

“It’s all good,” McMurray said. “Juan lives in Miami, so away from the track we don’t do anything together because we live so far apart. Juan and that team – it’s not always about the drivers sharing information, it’s about the crew chiefs, engineers and everybody being honest with each other; everybody does a good job of that.”

Montoya said that it’s about trust, and if the teammates work together as they should, they trust each other. But if one doesn’t work with the other at some point, there will be a time when the roles are reversed and the other gets hung out.

“It’s not about personalities,” Montoya said. “You’re not [going to] hear about, “I just like him so much I want to go out to dinner with him’ or ‘He’s so nice and so sweet and every time I look at him, I feel so much warmer.’

“But he’s my teammate and we’ve got to work together. He’s the guy driving the other company car and we’ve got to work together to do the best for our team. He’s a nice guy. We get along really well. We laugh a lot and have a really good relationship.”

Ganassi believes that, and said the fun nature of their personalities has them playing with the media over their differences.

“They have a lot more in common than they believe,” Ganassi said. “They obviously come from two backgrounds, two different parts of the world and two different styles of racing, and they end up together and they’re fine.”

(source:NASCAR.COM)