By Josh Farmer
INDIANAPOLIS – While Juan Pablo Montoya is has only raced in the Month of May this year, he is still enjoying every minute of it.
The two-time Indianapolis 500 was replaced by Josef Newgarden for the full 2017 Verizon IndyCar Series season. He rejoined the team for the IndyCar Grand Prix on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course two weeks ago, where he finished 10th after starting fifth.
While his racing is limited this year, the 41-year-old Colombian has not changed his approach entering his fifth Indianapolis 500.
“It’s the same,” he said. “If my approach would be different now, it means that I wouldn’t be doing it right. If I came hungrier to win this year than I did last year, then last year I wasn’t doing my job.”
Montoya has a stellar record at The Speedway including two wins and 192 laps led out of a possible 800.
This year, he is hoping to put last year’s race behind him. He struggled to find pace for much of the month and finished 33rd after crashing out on lap 63.
“Last year we were terrible,” he said. “It’s hard when you are bad. You’re looking at it, you’re working at it and it’s tough.”
Qualifying was not much better this year for Montoya, let alone the whole Team Penske squad. Montoya qualified his No. 22 Fitzgerald Glider Kits Chevrolet in 17th, the second highest entry for Team Penske. Being a part-timer, Montoya feels a sense of relief being that he is not chasing a season long points championship.
“A few of my teammates were pissed off about qualifying because they lost a lot of points,” he said. “For me, I really don’t care. The points aren’t an issue and to be honest with you, the Indy 500 shouldn’t be about points. You shouldn’t be talking about points when you are racing in the Indy 500.”
Despite starting 17th, Montoya feels good about what he and his Team Penske crew can do on Sunday. While the Honda-powered cars shown a lot of speed throughout the month, they have had some reliability issues as well. Montoya feels that whatever issues they may have could play right into their hands.
“The million dollar question is how fast the Hondas are going to be in the race and how reliable they are going to be,” he said. “Hopefully they are not that quick and reliable. If they are having issues, I’m sure they need to push the engines back a little, and if they do that, that will play into our hands a little.”
While not being in a racecar is not an ideal situation, Montoya has found it to be a blessing. Is his adoptive hometown of Miami, Florida, he is enjoying living life to the fullest and enjoys having the extra time with his family.
“It’s funny because I still do the same things,” he said. “I still train, I still swim from time to time. I go to the gym. I spend time on the boat. I have a really nice MasterCraft ski boat. We surf and they all love it, we all do it. We do wakeboarding together; it’s a good family time.”
That family time has also allowed the 1999 Indy car champion time to take part in his son Sebastian’s go-karting career. While there have been challenges in running a father/son karting team, he feels that it has created a new kind of bond as his son is following in his dad’s footsteps and progresses in his career.
“I’m pretty really hard on myself working on the car to make sure that things run really good and that we have good speed,” he said. “He was racing last weekend and I left everything ready. I spent probably a day and a half preparing his chassis for that race.
“It’s funny now because he always asks me, ‘How’s the car? Do you think we have a shot? What happened in qualifying? Are the Hondas really that fast? He’s really interested.”
Win or lose on Sunday, Montoya is satisfied knowing that he did it as well as he could.
“The problem is people think I’m really laid back but I when I do something, I have to do it right,” he said. “I’m really intense at it. I think that’s why I’m good at it.”
