Montoya patient, Junior pressing to make Chase

Steve Sampsell

Halfway through the Sprint Cup Series season, with 19 races left overall and nine remaining before the Chase begins, a quick look at the standings finds two drivers in unexpected spots.

Neither driver has a spot in the top 10, but Juan Montoya and Dale Earnhardt Jr. could make things interesting as soon as Saturday night — when the series makes its annual holiday weekend visit to Daytona International Speedway for the Coke Zero 400.

Montoya sits 12th in the standings with 2,049 points, good enough to make the Chase at this point, but just one point ahead of surging Kasey Kahne (2,048), who has compiled the fifth-best points total of any driver during the last six races.

Still, Montoya has the seventh-best points total during that same span and his improved performance on superspeedways could help him this weekend and the second half of the season in general. Plus, before the Chase begins, the series visits Watkins Glen International for a road-course event that should help Montoya craft a strong finish.

In his third full season of Cup Series racing, Montoya seems to be getting more comfortable and he’s not nearly as unpredictable on ovals as he was at the start of his career. Plus, he’s more worried about consistency and making the Chase than winning races — a patient perspective that might pay dividends.

Conversely, Junior remains mired in 19th place — a one spot improvement over last week but still seemingly far out of Chase contention and a distant fourth among the four-team contingent fielded by Hendrick Motorsports.

After early-season struggles prompted an overdue crew chief change, Junior has not found breakout success. Or even regularly strong results.

He’s among the sport’s top 25 in points earned during the past half dozen races, but probably needs a top-10 performance in that category if he hopes to crack the Chase.

His previous success at Daytona — two victories, six top-5s and 11 top- 10s in 19 career starts — provides room for optimism, but his situation lower in the standings and the pressure he faces as the sport’s most popular driver makes his path toward success a big more precarious.

Junior needs victories, both for performance and for perception, so patience might not be as much of an option as it is for Montoya. And a lack of

patience on a superspeedway, or at almost any track on the schedule, can lead to bad results.

George gone

With Tony George out as president and CEO of Indianapolis Motor Speedway and as leader of the Indy Racing League, the IRL faces an interesting future because he’ll no longer be able to subsidize the open-wheel circuit from the speedway’s coffers.

While some speculate this week’s move (George was ousted by a board dominated by his family members) could be a death knell for the IRL, the apparent tough-love move from the speedway might not be all that devastating.

After all, Indy has no real reason to exist without a marquis open-wheel event, so it’s hard to imagine the IMS board wants the IRL to fail (even though the series has reportedly not made a profit in the 14 years it has existed).

Maybe the George move might allow some more solid business models to develop for both the speedway and the series. That would be a good thing.

Noting NASCAR

•A group of 25 nominees for the first class in the NASCAR Hall of Fame was announced Thursday night, and the five members of the inaugural class will eventually be determined by vote of a 21-member panel. While it’s a nice, supposedly transparent selection approach, it’s also a bit much to select just one person.

Yes, the inaugural class to be enshrined next year will include five people, but at least three, and probably four, people already have spots in the class. They are: NASCAR founder Bill France; seven-time champions Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt; and David Pearson (105), the only driver besides Petty (200) with a triple-digit career victory total.

All the debate to pick one person, selecting Darrell Waltip or Cale Yarborough over Bobby Allison, for example, seems like a lot. For the inaugural class, maybe a more closed-door approach would have been better.

•After a reported incident at a hotel in New Hampshire last week, TNT play-by-play announcer Bill Weber did not work on the network’s coverage of the rain-shortened race won by Joey Logano. Now, Weber will be off the air for this week’s Coke Zero 400 and next week’s LifeLock.com 400 in Chicago as well.

•Another Earnhardt gets behind the wheel of a stock car for the first time this weekend. Twenty-year- old Taylor Earnhardt will drive the black No. 3 Chevrolet famously piloted by her late father during an appearance at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in England.

Steve Sampsell writes about auto racing for the Centre Daily Times. He may be reached a cdtrace@hotmail.com

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