Full Throttle

This reads like a story posted by ScrappleFace, king of online political and social satire… but it isn’t. Far from it!

Chip Ganassi is turning back the clock to 1999 when Juan Pablo Montoya last sat in a Ganassi owned race car.

Juan Pablo Montoya has secured a deal to drive for his former CART employer Chip Ganassi in NASCAR next season.

The team announced the deal today ahead of the USG Sheetrock 400 at the Chicagoland Speedway, where Montoya met up with members of his crew and attended a ‘closed door’ meeting with NASCAR officials including NASCAR President, Mike Helton.

Ganassi confirmed that Montoya will drive the No. 42 car next season, and could even enter a number of races this year once the F1 season is over.

Montoya’s direction after the current F1 season ended has been hotly debated with most speculation centered around Red Bull or Toyota. So much for “hot debates” and “speculation.”

The first question that came to my mind when reading this was predicated on the two Series’ involved. Both NASCAR and F1 personnel produce more “I gave birth to an alien baby” stories than all the supermarket tabloids combined.

How in the freakin’ hell was this kept under wraps!?

Ganassi snagging a former CART Champion, Indy 500 winner and Formula One driver for the #42 is a coup of epic proportions and is underscored by the presence of NASCAR President Mike Helton at the meeting.

At a subsequent press conference after the meeting Montoya expressed his pleasure for the deal.

I am so happy to be entering the fastest growing racing league in the world. I’ve thought about this for quite some time but the opportunity had to be right. I’ve known and worked with Chip for a number of years and this situation could not be better for me

You can almost visualize the mischievous lears on the faces of Mike Helton and HWSBO when reading that quote.

A couple other thoughts: Maybe many of us have been wrong all along. It could be, with another open seat at Ganassi in 2007, JV does have a chance to slip into NASCAR. I still doubt it, but I never would have guessed Montoya would be fitted for a roll cage either.

I would also bet many of the “NASCAR-centric left turn only” fans are all running around with their hair on fire screaming, “Montoya who!!?”

Even money says JPM won’t be in the #42 this year. The F1 season doesn’t end until the third week in October, just at the tail end of the Chase. If Ganassi were to put Montoya in a car during the Chase and he were part of an accident that effected a contender he would be hung from the nearest pit sign post. There is a little thing of receiving permission from his current employer McLaren which may or may not happen.

The best route for Ganassi, if permission is given, is to put JPM in a Busch ride and let him acclimate himself to the new job and surroundings. The Busch Series championship should be settled well before the final event at Homestead, 3 to 5 events before I’m guessing, and any problems that surface won’t effect the points race.

It’s interesting to note that the F1 website makes no mention (at this writing) of Montoya’s shift to NASCAR. That could be taken one of two ways. They don’t care and by omission they are saying “good riddence,” or they are slightly embarrassed
by “one of the elite” bolting to the taxi driving “bubbas” of NASCAR.

Others beating me to this story (damn sleep gets in the way of a good story): George at Fast Machines, When Truth is Stranger than Fiction, asked the pertinent question: “But if Ferrari or Renault had offered him a seat, even if for only one year, would he have taken a ride with Ganassi’s NASCAR operation?”

TireDawg asks: “What the hell is Ganassi thinking?”

Open Wheeler is looking at Memphis as a Montoya start in the Busch event on Oct 28^th and claims it was JPM that called Ganassi to get the switch talk started.

Scene Daily Blog says the move “will have the world watching” when Montoya slides behind the wheel of the #42 at Daytona.

And finally: It’s amazing of the most read NASCAR blogs those listed above are the only ones of about a dozen that even mention this story. They all comment on the Gordon victory Sunday so it’s not as if the breaking news wasn’t available to them.

UPDATE: Seems as though the “secret” wasn’t kept so deeply hidden. Yahoo Sports had a story on Saturday noting the mutual interest in the #42 by Ganassi and Montoya. It also notes talks began last month but at the time thinking was JPM would be returning to Ganassi’s open wheel team.

Yahoo also notes the hand of the Dodge Boys may have been acting behind the scenes:

Last weekend at the U.S. Grand Prix, Montoya was part of a press conference with DaimlerChrysler chairman Dr. Dieter Zetsche, his current boss Ron Dennis and NASCAR team owner Ray Evernham, who helped usher Dodge back into NASCAR.

DaimlerChrysler is the manufacturer of both the Dodge and Mercedes Benz brands, and Ganassi, of course, runs Dodges in Nextel Cup.

DaimlerChrysler sees Montoya as “a strong link between their company and the Latino audience, especially in regard to a series like Nextel Cup.”

Ah yes, NASCAR diversity, no wonder Mike Helton was part of the Montoya coming out party. I smell a ripe conspiracy being perculated in my fertile mind that deals with a larger than warranted JPM paycheck subsidized by Dr. Z.

NASCAR, F1, Formula One, Juan Pablo Montoya, Busch Series, Ganassi Racing, Auto Racing, Motorsports, Full Throttle