{"id":9459,"date":"2017-05-26T16:24:29","date_gmt":"2017-05-26T21:24:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=9459"},"modified":"2017-05-26T16:25:06","modified_gmt":"2017-05-26T21:25:06","slug":"montoya-enjoying-indy-despite-part-time-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2017\/05\/26\/montoya-enjoying-indy-despite-part-time-role\/","title":{"rendered":"Montoya enjoying Indy despite part time role"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Josh Farmer<\/em><\/p>\n

INDIANAPOLIS – While Juan Pablo Montoya<\/strong> is has only raced in the Month of May this year, he is still enjoying every minute of it.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Juan Pablo Montoya leads a group through Turn 3 during practice for the 101st Indianapolis 500 — Photo by: David Yowe<\/p><\/div>\n

The two-time Indianapolis 500 was replaced by Josef Newgarden for the full 2017 Verizon IndyCar Series<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

While his racing is limited this year, the 41-year-old Colombian has not changed his approach entering his fifth Indianapolis 500.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the same,\u201d he said. \u201cIf my approach would be different now, it means that I wouldn\u2019t be doing it right. If I came hungrier to win this year than I did last year, then last year I wasn\u2019t doing my job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Montoya has a stellar record at The Speedway including two wins and 192 laps led out of a possible 800.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Juan Pablo Montoya. Photo by Chris Jones<\/p><\/div>\n

This year, he is hoping to put last year\u2019s race behind him. He struggled to find pace for much of the month and finished 33rd after crashing out on lap 63.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year we were terrible,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard when you are bad. You\u2019re looking at it, you\u2019re working at it and it’s tough.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cA few of my teammates were pissed off about qualifying because they lost a lot of points,\u201d he said. \u201cFor me, I really don\u2019t care. The points aren\u2019t an issue and to be honest with you, the Indy 500 shouldn\u2019t be about points. You shouldn\u2019t be talking about points when you are racing in the Indy 500.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Juan Pablo Montoya. Photo by Joe Skibinski<\/p><\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe million dollar question is how fast the Hondas are going to be in the race and how reliable they are going to be,\u201d he said. \u201cHopefully they are not that quick and reliable. If they are having issues, I\u2019m sure they need to push the engines back a little, and if they do that, that will play into our hands a little.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Juan Pablo Montoya. Photo by Chris Jones<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s funny because I still do the same things,\u201d he said. \u201cI 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\u2019s a good family time.\u201d<\/p>\n

That family time has also allowed the 1999 Indy car champion time to take part in his son Sebastian\u2019s 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\u2019s footsteps and progresses in his career.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty really hard on myself working on the car to make sure that things run really good and that we have good speed,\u201d he said. \u201cHe was racing last weekend and I left everything ready. I spent probably a day and a half preparing his chassis for that race.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s funny now because he always asks me, \u2018How\u2019s the car? Do you think we have a shot? What happened in qualifying? Are the Hondas really that fast? He\u2019s really interested.\u201d<\/p>\n

Win or lose on Sunday, Montoya is satisfied knowing that he did it as well as he could.<\/p>\n

“The problem is people think I\u2019m really laid back but I when I do something, I have to do it right,” he said. “I\u2019m really intense at it. I think that\u2019s why I\u2019m good at it.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":675,"featured_media":9462,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[230,421,125,22,103,83],"class_list":["post-9459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indycar","tag-indianapolis-500","tag-indianapolis-motor-speedway","tag-indy-500","tag-indycar","tag-juan-pablo-montoya","tag-verizon-indycar-series"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/04CJ4137.jpg?fit=5184%2C3456&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-2sz","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/675"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9459"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9467,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9459\/revisions\/9467"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}