Montoya's third crew chief in a month

tkj24

tkj24

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Pattie becomes Montoya's third crew chief in a month
By The Associated Press
May 20, 2008
07:19 PM EDT

type size: + -CONCORD, N.C. -- Juan Montoya will have his third crew chief in a month when Brian Pattie takes over the No. 42 Dodge for this week's race at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

Pattie replaces Jimmy Elledge, who was put in charge of the car four races ago in a crew shakeup at Chip Ganassi Racing. Elledge initially swapped places with Donnie Wingo, who guided Montoya's transition from Formula One to NASCAR but was moved to Reed Sorenson's crew in the swap.

Montoya is 16th in points with one top-10 finish this season, a second last month at Talladega Superspeedway in Elledge's first race leading the crew. He then finished 32nd in Richmond, 23rd in Darlington and was 14th in Saturday night's Sprint All-Star Race.

Pattie, a crew chief on Ganassi's Nationwide Series teams, moves to Montoya's pit box for Sunday's Coca-Cola 600.
 
ya know I dunno. is it the car, team, or driver? Marlin is the only driver Gnassi has had to date that was competitive in his equipment on a weekly basis so it seems the cars and people are ok. is it the learning curve for Montoya, dunno how it must feel to go from being a consistent front runner in IndyCars & F1 to a soso runner in NASCAR...
 
Restrictor Plate King! said:
ya know I dunno. is it the car, team, or driver? Marlin is the only driver Gnassi has had to date that was competitive in his equipment on a weekly basis so it seems the cars and people are ok. is it the learning curve for Montoya, dunno how it must feel to go from being a consistent front runner in IndyCars & F1 to a soso runner in NASCAR...
Click to expand...

Yea but like you said....that organization has always been soso.........
 
Restrictor Plate King! said:
ya know I dunno. is it the car, team, or driver? Marlin is the only driver Gnassi has had to date that was competitive in his equipment on a weekly basis so it seems the cars and people are ok. is it the learning curve for Montoya, dunno how it must feel to go from being a consistent front runner in IndyCars & F1 to a soso runner in NASCAR...
Click to expand...

Go Panthers said:
Yea but like you said....that organization has always been soso.........
Click to expand...
Montoya's the only driver to win for Ganassi since Jamie McMurray's breakout win in 2002.

I think it's all of the above. I mean, everybody expected Jamie McMurray to breakout and start clicking off wins when he joined Roush. All he's managed is a photofinish thriller at Daytona and a bunch of crashes (mostly of his doing).

Montoya has had good qualifying runs and good race runs. But he's never able to get momentium built up. His full-contact driving style doesn't 100% help him either. :eek:

I like Montoya, and I think he'll be a consistent contender given time.
 
Andy, it's no secret that you like JPM. I have had to agree that this man is much more than what was originally thought of when he first arrived. But his main problem is not his crew, or even his boss, it's the car he's driving. If he were driving a car in the Hendricks stables, I'd say that he would by now have quite a few wins under his belt. Maybe even in a Roush Ford, but driving a Dodge at this time doesn't do him much good. I wonder what he might do in a DEI Chebby?
 
True that, you know what they say about blind squirrels but look at the races in general, are the Dodges that competitive this year?
 
Its going to take more than a new crew chief. I don't think Dodge can hang with the others right now. I don't understand why they are looking so out of place this season. I expected Ganassi and Penski to be contenders this year and so far thats not looking good.
 
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