Daytona Beach, Fla. – The uneasy feeling of driving a strange car is something most people face at one time or another. Imagine doing so in heavy traffic at 180 mph, just inches from a wall, and you begin to understand what Juan Pablo Montoya will experience today in the Daytona 500.
Montoya and former Thornton resident A.J. Allmendinger are this year’s heralded Nextel Cup rookies. Both are making the transition from open- wheel, road-course backgrounds. They are used to higher speeds, but having more control in Indy-style cars.
Now they’re climbing into stock cars and simply turning left, but other complexities are sure to make this a wild ride for both.
“It’s a difficult change that is bigger that I ever could imagine,” said Allmendinger, a former Champ Car star who won the Grand Prix of Denver last summer.
Montoya, a former Champ Car and Indianapolis 500 champion, and a Formula One standout, compares the move to learning to walk again, except the messages from the brain to your legs and feet don’t always get the same results.
“One day the car works good (and) you look like a hero,” he said. “Next day the car handles bad, and the transition is hard.”
Taking these baby steps is heavy stuff. A 3,400-pound stock car is twice as heavy as the machines Montoya and Allmendinger drove last year. Their heads no longer are exposed like they were in open-wheel cockpits, but the cages they sit in now fail to make them feel as safe.
They were taught not to run directly behind opposing cars because dirty, unsettled air adversely affects crucial intake ducts and the delicate wings that stabilize open-wheel vehicles. Now, tailgating is in. NASCAR is all about drafting, a technique used to conserve fuel and slingshot past cars.
Losing traction in open wheel is a dangerous situation that usually calls for a pit stop. In a stock car, sliding through a corner is just part of the game.
Allmendinger already met his match this week, crashing in a 150-mile Daytona qualifying race Thursday and failing to make today’s field.
“I’m amazed how much the car moves around,” Allmen- dinger said. “I’m not going as fast as I did in a Champ Car, but you’re moving around so much it feels like things come at you faster. I knew it was going to be tough. You have to figure out every little nuance of how to keep the car stable.”
Current NASCAR stars Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Kasey Kahne came from the open-wheel ranks, but were raised on dirt tracks, competing in midgets and sprint cars made to slide through corners. That likely aided their NASCAR development.
Stewart moved to NASCAR from the Indy Racing League, Champ Car’s open-wheel rival series, and initially struggled adapting to stock cars. In 1998, the year before he joined NASCAR’s top series, he failed to win a race in 22 starts in the second-tier Busch Series.
Going straight from an open- wheel, road-course background into NASCAR has been difficult for those attempting it recently. Former Champ Car winners Scott Pruett, Max Papis and Michel Jourdain Jr. each gave it a run and failed to prove themselves.
Another former Champ Car winner, Christian Fittipaldi, drove a 15-race Cup stint for Petty Enterprises in 2005 and never finished better than 24th.
“Most drivers find it’s a lot harder to go lighter to heavier,” driver/owner Kyle Petty told USA Today. “If you do spins in a rental car in a parking lot, and then you do it in a go-kart, you’ll say, ‘Wow, this is a lot better.”‘
A key for reaching the road to success is driving for a good team. Montoya drives an entry for well-established Chip Ganassi Racing. Allmendinger drives for the start-up Red Bull team in a Toyota, a new manufacturer in Nextel Cup this season. Veteran Kenny Wallace said neither Montoya nor Allmendinger will challenge until their teams improve.
“Ten years ago there used to be these drivers like Gordon or Stewart that would come along and get in these cars and make them go fast,” Wallace said. “It’s more about the machine now. Our cars have got more like Formula One, even though they’re obviously very different. It’s less about how great of a driver you are and more about what team you’re driving for.”
Montoya, who came to Daytona with a guaranteed starting spot, is off to a better start than Allmendinger. Montoya passed Gordon, the eventual winner, in one of the qualifying races Thursday, and led 17 laps before suspension problems knocked him out.
“He’s got an awesome attitude and he seems to be enjoying himself,” Gordon said of Montoya. “This 500-mile race, he’s going to learn a lot. It’s a tough race, hard to be patient, and experience is key. But his talent overrides a lot of his inexperience.”
Montoya, who will start 36th in the 43-car field today, said having confidence is a key.
“You go in (the corners), you get out of the gas, get back on it, the car twitches (but) you want to run fast,” Montoya said.
Still, he’s willing to be patient with the process.
“I’m committed for this for the long-term,” Montoya said. “Is it going to happen this year? I don’t know. But you got to be a bit realistic. I never put myself to set some goals and say, ‘I need to do this and that.’ You just got to go out there and do the best you can. It’s that simple.”
Simple, yet Allmendinger admits it’s also complex.
“I just need to get comfortable with these cars, to figure them out,” he said.
Staff writer Mike Chambers can be reached at 303-954-1357 or mchambers@denverpost.com.
