VICS: Juan Pablo Montoya Kicking off Season with Consistency

Three races into the year and Juan Pablo Montoya has the mark of a consistent championship contender underneath him. Each of the races, Montoya has finished in the top-five, highlighted by a win at St. Petersburg.

“Honestly, I couldn’t be prouder of my No. 2 Team Penske Chevy team for the way we have started the season,” he said. “We’re the only team to start the season with one win, two podiums and three top-five finishes in the first three races. Those stats are really a testament to the team and how hard they have worked since the start of the 2014 season. It’s one thing to go through a rough start to a season – like we did in 2014 – and not learn anything, but we definitely used those experiences to make ourselves much better. You saw that in the second half of the 2014 season and we have carried that over to this season.”

Scoring the points early in the season is something the Colombian is focused on, and mentioned during his post-race press conference at Long Beach.

“It’s about being consistent and being smart, and as long as I don’t have to risk the car to protect third place, it’ll be fine, and it worked well,” he commented.

In the final laps at Long Beach, Montoya drove as hard as he could to keep teammate Simon Pagenaud behind him, despite Pagenaud being all over his bumper over the final eight laps.

“I was surprised my tires were going off and not his,” Montoya commented. “But mine went off, and I mean, I saw him coming, and it’s still about not making mistakes and make sure I come out of that last corner and he was a little quicker down the straight.  So just pay attention how close he was when he was in the bus and stuff like that.  He was never really that close, you know what I mean?  He got close, maybe his nose to my rear tires but that was about it.  He never got next to me or anything.  I thought it was the move I made on him was crucial.  I was pretty happy with that.”

The consistency, though, looks to come easy as Team Penske has solid cars all the way around with Helio Castroneves, Will Power and Pagenaud running up front each weekend.

“One of the amazing things about having the four of us being so competitive is you do a great lap in practice, you finish practicing, you look at the data and they’re still kicking your butt somewhere,” Montoya commented. “They are.  There’s always corners where they’re better than you so you always find ways to better yourself, and I think that’s more than the cars running better or whatever it is, I think the group of the four drivers is making a big difference.”

Montoya added that the chemistry comes from the fact that they’re all mature drivers due to having been in the series a long time, compared to young drives who come in “really gritty” and “don’t want to help anybody”.

“Something at Team Penske, the No. 1 thing is the team and the benefit of the team, and we understand that and we all help each other,” he continued.

The points leader hopes the consistency continues this weekend at Barber Motorsports Park, which didn’t go that well last year as Montoya finished 21st.

“Hopefully we can see the same speed in the Hawk Performance car this weekend at Barber,” Montoya commented. “I was happy with the way we tested at spring training (at Barber) last month and we were really good there last year before I went off course. That gives me a lot of confidence heading into this weekend.”