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Montoya and Texaco/Havoline Team
Bring Home Top-10 from Dover
DOVER, Del. (September 23, 2007)—Juan Pablo Montoya and the Texaco/Havoline team ran a patient race on Sunday in the Dodge Dealers 400 at Dover International Speedway. Crew Chief Donnie Wingo and the crew worked methodically on changes to the No. 42 Dodge Avenger while Montoya showed extreme patience on the track avoiding several multi-car incidents.
"This week we finally figured something out on this Avenger," Montoya said. "It's pretty surprising to get a top-10 finish. The real key today was taking a 10th to 15th-place car and staying out of trouble."
Montoya started on the outside pole—tying his career-best starting spot for the third time—after his qualifying effort on Friday. The team struggled finding the balance of the car in the final practice session on Saturday on the high-banked track. When the green flag waved for the 400-lap event, Montoya told Wingo the car was "really loose off the corner, and tight in the center." He had dropped back to 14th when NASCAR waved the yellow flag for debris on lap 53. He brought the car down pit road for its first adjustments of the day. The Texaco/Havoline crew made an air pressure adjustment, and lowered the trackbar while changing four tires and adding fuel. The team's quick stop moved Montoya to 12th for the restart.
Montoya would run in the top 15 for most of the race, unable to make too much progress on the track with an ill-handling car. The pit crew, however, consistently picked up spots in the pits while trying to improve the balance of the Texaco/Havoline Dodge. At the midway point of the race, Montoya was running 14th and the car was still either really loose or extremely tight. Contact was made with the No. 26 car on lap 228, after several laps of side-by-side racing, bringing out the caution. Minimal damage was made to either car, but the team put on fresh tires and made an air pressure adjustment.
A round of green-flag pit stops concluded on lap 315, and Montoya was now 14th with only six cars remaining on the lead lap. The caution flag finally waved on lap 354, but would not be the final caution of the day. A multi-car wreck brought out the yellow flag on lap 363 and the red flag on lap 370. Next, what appeared to be a tough break for the team may have been what put them in the situation to finish in the top 10. Montoya told Wingo he thought the left rear tire was going flat under caution. Wingo brought him down pit road on lap 377 for tires and a chassis adjustment. The tire was indeed flat and Montoya now had to start at the rear of the field in 17th.
However, on lap 386 a 10-car pile-up broke out that Montoya would have been in the middle of if it weren't for the flat tire. He was able to slow down enough to avoid the melee. NASCAR red-flagged the race again for 11 minutes to clean up the track. Once the race got underway with 11 laps to go, Montoya and the Texaco/Havoline Dodge were running 12th. He was able to pass two cars in the closing laps to earn his fifth top-10 of the season.
"We couldn't really find a good balance on the Texaco/Havoline Dodge; it was either too loose or too tight," Montoya noted. "We fought that all day and just stayed out of trouble that was the key thing. It’s good and I’m pretty happy with the way the day went."
The Texaco/Havoline team moved to 19th in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup standings and Montoya earned Raybestos Rookie of the Race honors for the 12th time this season. He unofficially leads David Ragan by 17 points (222-215) in the rookie standings with eight races remaining.
The team heads to Dover International Speedway next weekend for the 28th race of the season.
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