Montoya Talks with Media at Las Vegas Motor Speedway

JUAN PABLO MONTOYA, NO. 42 CLOROX CHEVROLET, met with members of the media at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and discussed his season to-date, racing at Las Vegas and other topics.  Full transcript:

HOW DO YOU SEE THIS WEEKEND AT LAS VEGAS UNFOLDING? “It should be a good weekend. I am pretty excited to get on to a mile-and-a-half with the new nose. The cars should work a little bit different. It should be interesting. I haven’t been on a mile-and-a-half since Homestead, no testing or anything, so that is going to be quite exciting again. We’ll see what happens. We had a really good Daytona. Last week was kind of horrible for us, but we still scored good points and brought the car to the end. Our goal this year is to make sure we finish every race. I think with the points system, you have to make sure you finish.”

TODAY WE HEARD THAT JIMMY VASSER HAD A NICKNAME FOR JIMMIE JOHNSON, YOU WERE HIS TEAMMATE, DID HE HAVE ONE FOR YOU? “I don’t know. Ask him. I have no idea. (LAUGHS) I really don’t know, he probably did, it wouldn’t surprise me.”

WHAT MOVIE DID YOU GO SEE THE OTHER NIGHT? “I watched [I am] Number Four. That was really cool. It was a good movie. Haven’t been to the movies in awhile so that was pretty cool.”

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO GET ADJUSTED TO MARTINSVILLE AND WHAT IS IT LIKE? “It doesn’t take you. It is go, brake, turn, go, brake, turn. (SMILES) Is that a good description. To tell you the truth, the first couple of times you go there, it is hard because it is a lot slower than anything you’ve done and because you are going so slow and it is so flat, the car the slides around. It is more like a road course. It is in between a road course and an oval. For me personally, it is not that hard. Just have to make sure the car rolls through the center and put the power down. That is all that matters.”

HOW IMPORTANT IS THE RACE AT THIS TRACK AFTER THE FIRST TWO RACES AND WHERE DO YOU THINK YOUR PROGRAM IS RIGHT NOW? “For us we decided to go a different way last week on the setup and everything on the car. It really bit us. I told Chip (Ganassi car owner) look at the bright side, we weren’t involved in the wreck, otherwise we would have probably been in the middle of that wreck. That is the bright side of it. The bad side of it is that we ran horrible and that is normally a good track for us so in a way we wasted some points there. Here we are going to run very similar to what we ran last year and we think it should be pretty good based on the numbers and everything. We are pretty confident the car should work good with the new nose. So, pretty excited.”