Juan Pablo wins the pole for another 'Boys, have at it,' and Danica Patrick may not believe how this sport has morphed since March

  Juan Pablo Montoya: Here's betting he rallies to make the chase (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   LOUDON, N.H.
   Juan Pablo Montoya, desperately trying to mount a comeback and make the playoffs, edged Kasey Kahne for the pole Friday...Jeff Gordon said he was braced for the hits to come in Sunday's Lenox 301, and Martin Truex Jr. didn't back off a bit from his Sonoma vow of vengeance....and veteran drivers all ripped their fellow drivers for lack of respect and patience in this season of 'Boys, have at it.' But all the Boston-area media wanted was Danica Patrick.
   Yes, more DanicaMania in NASCAR.
   The diminutive Indy-car star, who finished second in the Texas Indy-car stop a few weeks ago, is running in Saturday's 185-mile Nationwide race here (3:30 pm ET), after a four-month break from stock car racing.
   She got in 55 laps of practice (no one put down more) Friday, worked her way up to 24th fastest, on the flat one-mile she's never raced before in a stocker, and will get to qualify at 10 am Saturday.
   Saturday's favorite – Kevin Harvick, with Carl Edwards, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Busch, Paul Menard, Elliott Sadler, Reed Sorenson and Joey Logano all Cup stars in the field too.
   Among the many here fawning over Patrick were track boss Jerry Gappens, who gave her a $1,000 pair of shoes, and track owner Bruton Smith.
   Patrick, you may recall, had a decent start to her part-time stock car career in February with a good run in the ARCA 200. She got crashed out of the Daytona 300, and then suffered through a dismal California race, before recovering with a decent run at Las Vegas in early March.
   Since then, she's been Indy-car racing.
   She's got another eight Nationwide races on tap this season after Saturday, all in Rick Hendrick equipment, logoed by Dale Earnhardt Jr., and with Earnhardt's cousin Tony Eury Jr. as her crew chief.
   Patrick said getting into these tight corners was tricky. "I don't like a loose race car," she said.

  Are you sure those shoes are fireproofed to NASCAR safety specs? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   Montoya has had great cars all season but too often he's been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and with all those DNFs it may be very difficult for him to make the championship chase. "We are looking to finish as high as we can, but we have to finish, we can't afford to get DNFs," Montoya said.
    "We have really fast race cars every week. We've just been involved in a lot of wrecks that weren't my fault."

    And what about this Gordon-Truex thing from Sonoma?
   "I accept his apology, yes, but things are going to change between me and him, that's just the bottom line," Truex says.
     "The nice guy seems to always get pushed around...and I'm tired of being the nice guy, I'm tired of getting pushed around. 
    "I'm not going to stand here and say I'm going to wreck Jeff, because that's not me, that's not how I do things.  But some things are going to change. 
    "I'm not going to take it anymore. I'm going to race him the way he races me.
    "If they don't respect me, they're not going to get anything back.  That's just as simple as it is. 
    "I know Jeff understands that.  He told me when he apologized that he understands I'm mad.  He understands he's got one coming."
   And this isn't the only little feud to keep an eye on.
    "I haven't seen much respect all year, to be honest with you," Truex said. "Guys take advantage of you every chance they get.
    "Guys just cross the line too much. 
    "I don't know what the answers are to fix that. I just know how I am going to do it – I'm going to do what everybody else does to me every week."
   Apparently there's more to all this than just their run-in at Sonoma.
    "I'm going to change the way I race him, yeah," Truex says. "I've always been very, very respectful; I just never got that back. 
    "You race with a guy like Mark Martin, and you run him down from a straightaway, and he lets you go because he doesn't want to hold himself up.
     "You run Jeff down from a straightaway, he races me like we're going for the win. 
     "There have been times when Jeff's caught me and never even gave me a chance to get out of the way -- he just started running into me. And he's the first guy to hang his middle finger out the window when he goes by you. 
     "Things are going to change."

      And now, welcome again to NASCAR, Danica Patrick: You've obviously picked a great point in the season to resume your stock car career. Just hang on tight.
      Patrick concedes the obvious: "I'm nervous because it's new, and there's so much to learn about the way a race goes...how the race plays out normally... and the yellow flags, and the pit stops, and how the car changes over a fuel run, and how the tires change.
    "And there's just so much that I'm unfamiliar with.
    "That makes me nervous...because I care and I want to do well."
    She did test for this race by running laps at Milwaukee, like most drivers here.
    "I hope to do a good job," she says. "I know people are watching, and I want to put on a good show for the fans -- I want to give them a reason to cheer for me."
    Eventually maybe in Cup?
   "Let's see how this goes," she replies cautiously.
    Saturday she says she'll be pleased if she can finish 15th to 20th.
    Racing is one thing, qualifying she says is quite another, that may take longer to learn than she anticipated.
    The whole NASCAR thing, she concedes, has been a bit chaotic and overwhelming. And that's just on the track, not to mention the media whirlwind she's going through here.
    Confidence, she says, is the thing she needs more of.
    Both in the car and in the NASCAR garage: "Trying to always stay upbeat and in a good mood, and stay positive, and look at the positives...because when you're going, going, going, sometimes it's a little easy to get a little negative.
    "It's important to look at the good things. And I'm really fortunate I get to do all of this and race this many races.
     "I feel lucky."
    Jeff Burton, for one, and he's not alone, says he's impressed that Patrick is coming back for more of this.
    "Danica's challenge is big," Burton says. "To go from the car she is used to driving into these cars is a monumental task. 
    "She has been driving very high-grip cars that are very, very light cars, and make a tremendous amount of downforce, to cars that are very low on downforce, with a very high center of gravity, that don't have nearly the tire we need to make maximum grip. 
    "That's a really, really hard road.
    "And it will be a big challenge for her to continue to make that adjustment back and forth, and back and forth. 
    "Ultimately she will have to make a decision: Can she do both?  It would be very, very difficult. 
    "For her to have long-term success (in NASCAR), she has got to get in a seat for miles and miles and miles, and learn all the little things, all the buttons you have to push to make these cars go fast. 
    'It's going to be hard for her to do that with a limited schedule.
    "I admire her for trying.  It takes a lot of guts to expose yourself in front of millions of people -- in front of all the media, in front of all your peers. It takes a lot of guts to expose yourself to not maybe being as successful as you want to be. 
    "The only way to know if you can do it is to go try it. 
     "If somebody came to me and said 'Hey, you want to run Texas in an IRL car?' I'd say 'Hell no!  I don't want to get embarrassed!'
     "She's doing that....and I have a lot of respect for that."

       Friday's qualifying results for Sunday's Lenox 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway

    
    
    
    
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     No more Mr. Nice Guy. This dude is seriously ticked off at Jeff Gordon. And Gordon knows he's got one coming from Mr. Martin Truex Jr. Just when and where, well, stay tuned (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)