Juan Pablo Montoya's NASCAR success may be whetting Jacques Villeneuve's desire to try this sport once again

  Montoya could be a threat to win the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship...but first he just wants to win at the Glen...and anywhere, really (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   WATKINS GLEN, N.Y.
   Maybe it's Juan Pablo Montoya's summer surge that has piqued his interest again.
   Maybe it's just boredom with hanging around the house.
   Or maybe it has something to do with the rejuvenated Canadian Grand Prix now back on the Formula One tour for 2010 (a five year deal for $20 million a year, to be paid by Canadian promoters to F1) at the Montreal track named in honor of his late father.
   But whatever the reason, it looks like Jacques Villeneuve wants back in the NASCAR hunt.
   The question now is what team might get him, and with what sponsor, and for how many races.
   Toyota, perhaps, has a good interest in Villeneuve, it would seem.
   "I think he just wants to go back Formula One racing," says Slugger Labbe, Villeneuve's crew chief for last year's brief attempt at NASCAR.
   Montoya, 33, won Formula One events from 2001 (Monza, Italy) through 2005 (including Monaco, Brazil and Germany), but never became a championship contender. And he jumped to NASCAR in the summer of 2006.
   Villeneuve, now 38, won the 1997 F1 championship, but his move into NASCAR in 2008 didn't go very far. He tried but failed to make the field for the Daytona 500 with Labbe in a Bill Davis Toyota.
   Now another NASCAR team owner, Richard Petty, has made a move for Villeneuve's services in Cup, though a package couldn't be put together in time for Villeneuve to make this weekend's stop at the Glen, though Villeneuve was enthusiastic about the opportunity.
   What Villeneuve might actually do, well, no one seems to know.
  
  

  Can Jacques Villeneuve make it in NASCAR? Does he have a game plan? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  
But it's clear what Juan Pablo Montoya is aiming at – the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship.
   Montoya, whose driving reputation is as a hard-charger in the Dale Earnhardt/Jimmy Spencer vein, insists he's 'points racing' to make the playoffs, with five races till the cut.
   But he's not driving like that. He should have won Indianapolis two weeks ago. He had a great shot at winning Pocono Monday. And he should be darned good here too.
   "We had a great Monday," Montoya says. "We were really quick. I just made a mistake in the pits -- Went a little deep once, and the left-rear tire was loose, and we dropped.
    "What really helped was we had great fuel mileage…and everything just came into our hands.
    "We showed at the end that we had as good a car as any. We just never really had the track position."
    Montoya's patience with this whole NASCAR thing over the past two years has been impressive. He announced in late 2006 he was coming here, and he started testing. And now Jimmie Johnson says Montoya has become a "real" stock car racer.
    "I never really expected it take any shorter than it has," Montoya insists. "If somebody had come to me and said 'All right, you being a Formula One driver, you're going to come here and you're going to kick ass, I didn't think that was going to happen.
    "A couple of weeks when I felt comfortable and everything came out my way I could be fast. But it was more hit-and-miss than anything."
    Sunday here Montoya says good fuel mileage could be key: "At Sonoma and in this race there is always a bit of fuel mileage involved…and a lot of luck.
    "Especially the double-file restart here is going to be pretty interesting. I think it's going to be pretty wild.
    "It's all about surviving right now.
     "Last year we had our car quick enough to win, and we just ran out of brakes. I believe we fixed that. And we've got a new car here, and it should be pretty good."
    Those double-file restarts….wow! Carl Edwards says they're going to get rougher and rougher….till there's a massive 15-car pile-up.
  
    

    Carl Edwards: "We have yet to see the truly exciting side of the double-file re-starts...which I feel is going to be wadding up about 15 of the leaders at one of these tracks. I hope somehow we can get around that. But it's going to happen. It's going to be bad." (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
    

    Montoya says it's all because it's so hard to pass: "90 percent of overtaking is done within the first two or three laps, and after that wherever you end up in line that's where you ride," Montoya says. "If you're going to make any ground, you have to make it in those first two laps.
    "I think here, though, it might be a little different -- Here it is very easy to miss a corner (and go off the track).
    "If you get too aggressive here, you're going to DNF the race.
    "We got tangled with Kevin Harvick two years ago when Martin Truex pushed me; but it can happen to anybody, especially now with double-file restarts."
    So just how much does Montoya want to push things, in these last five races till the chase?
    "How far are you willing to push it?" Montoya says. "Like last week -- we finished second, and we probably could have won if Kasey Kahne would have pushed me.
   "But if's and but's don't count.
     "Is it (a win) going to happen? I believe it's going to happen pretty soon."

   
Juan Pablo Montoya's red contrasts sharply with the Glen's legendary Carolina Blue (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)