Montoya! On the Indy pole. Will he dominate the Brickyard again? Or will JJ make it 3-in-a-row?

  Indy pole winner Juan Pablo Montoya (L) talks strategy and tactics with Daytona 500 winning teammate Jamie McMurray (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)   

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   INDIANAPOLIS
   Juan Pablo Montoya set the pace again Saturday here, warming up for Sunday's Brickyard 400 as 'Montoya's Revenge,' by edging Jimmie Johnson for the pole for the 1 p.m. start.
   But, again, fallout from the latest crash in the long-running Carl Edwards-Brad Keselowski feud dominated talk in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway garage.
   So, Ryan Newman, how do you really feel about this Carl Edwards-Brad Keselowski thing?
   Newman, winner at Phoenix in April but otherwise racing rather low-keyed this season, like teammate and owner Tony Stewart, ramped it all up a notch here, on his home turf.
   Boys, have at it?
   Well, Newman, for one, says he's just about had all he can take of that rowdiness
   And Newman is ripping NASCAR officials for letting the Keselowski-Edwards feud fester.
   "I don't think NASCAR has taken care of the situation," Newman says bluntly.
   "I think they've issued -- what is that for Carl, his second probation this year?
    "See I don't know what probation actually means anymore."
    And he laughed.
    "Yeah, when we used to get probation for the season...and then when you crash somebody and put them upside down and they almost get killed, you get probation for three races. I don't quite understand that," Newman said, referring to NASCAR's three-race probation on Edwards for the Atlanta crash in March.
    So how is Newman himself going to handle things?
    "It doesn't change the way I race them....It changes my level of respect for them -- more so Carl," Newman says.
   " But there have been drivers doing that, or having that affect on people or racing, for the last 100 years. It's just there are more cameras on Carl right now."
   
   

   Ryan Newman isn't a bit happy with NASCAR's handling of the Edwards-Keselowski thing, and he's not too happy either with the two antagonists, who keep crashing (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
   

    If Newman were judge-and-jury?
   "There is a point when NASCAR should take a win away," Newman says.
    "I don't think that was the condition for that...but I know there's been no direct response for NASCAR taking away a win in the last 20, 30, 40, or 50 years that I know of. Or ever.
    "So my point is I don't foresee that...but I think that penalty was not just.
    "I'm not saying an eye for an eye, but if you look at what Carl did to the rest of the cars that got crashed behind him, that's not right.
    "When you admit that you crashed that car and therefore crashed six or eight cars behind him....that's not cool.
     "Have at it, boys is not that.
     "Have at it, boys means even if we crash each other or get into an accident or lose respect for one another, you go talk about it.
     "That's the 'Have at it, Boys': You go behind a trailer and you talk about it....We can get in each other's faces.
     "Going out there and purposely crashing somebody....turning right or turning left just to crash 'em on purpose, whether you're winning the race or not, is not at all 'Have at it Boys'.
    "Some people have thought of manslaughter or attempted manslaughter, but that's closer to what it is.
    "I'm all for 'Have at it Boys'. Let us race.
     "But that's not racing.
     "We should paint up a car for Carl to go race demolition derbies with. We're racing; we're not demolition derbies."
     And if NASCAR isn't going to deal with the situation.....
    "Brad hasn't decked Carl yet," Newman said. "To me, that's all it is: Brad just needs to go up there and lay one across his lip and everything will be fine."

    And Stewart's take?
   Well, Stewart hasn't won in quite a while now, and he's becoming increasingly testy with the media. No surprise there.
   This particularly weekend he's targeted the media for its coverage of the latest Edwards-Keselowski run-in.
    And it sounds like he and Newman haven't been having dinner at the same table lately.
    BHAI?
  "It's nice to know we don't have to worry about NASCAR putting their hand over top of our head," Stewart says. "If somebody does something wrong, we take it into our own hands, like it used to be done. 
    "I don’t know why everybody.....the frustrating part for me as a driver is that this is the way it was done 10 years ago, and nobody in the media complained about it. 
    "Now all of the sudden the media is making such a big drama about it that they're forcing NASCAR into their hands again. And I don’t want the media to dictate how we drive our race cars. But unfortunately that's what its coming down to, and that's scaring me."
    Huh?
    "It always was that way," Stewart says of on-track 'justice.' "And then somebody writes an article about somebody crashing somebody and then in starts making NASCAR have to react because of the media. And that's not the way this series should be. 
    "We shouldn't be dictating how we race off of the media's reactions to what happens on the track. 
     "We've always handled it just fine. 
     "I'm not sure the situations this year have been the most ideal, but when NASCAR is taking that privilege away from us, then everybody will get back in the swing of doing it right and it will self-police itself again."

  
                                   
The Saturday qualifying results for Sunday's Brickyard 400
   

   
   

      [Note: You can use Twitter as an easy headline service for mikemulhern.net stories, with our instant Tweets to your mobile as soon as our newest NASCAR story is filed. And mikemulhern.net is mobile-friendly for viewing. You can also use the orange RSS feed button as a quickie headline service on your laptop or home computer for mikemulhern.net stories, by creating a Live Bookmark RSS feed on your web browser's toolbar. Or you can create a Google Alert for mikemulhernnet.]

    

   Jimmie Johnson (L) is going for his third straight Brickyard win....but Juan Pablo Montoya (R) may have a say in how that goes in Sunday's 400 (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)