Pattie, Montoya have it going

April 7, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — The last thing Juan Pablo Montoya wanted was a crew chief change. He didn’t want the turmoil and feared another leadership change would unravel his race team.

He was right, too.

Montoya was furious last May when his plea to keep Jimmy Elledge was rejected and team owner Chip Ganassi assigned him Brian Pattie, his third crew chief of the season. The emotional driver let his frustration carry over to the racetrack, creating a strained situation for Ganassi’s flagship team.

When calmer heads finally prevailed, the two agreed to focus on turning Montoya and the No. 42 into a legitimate contender.

Seven races into this season, it’s clear they’re headed in the right direction. With his seventh-place finish Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway, Montoya notched a third-consecutive top-12 finish for the first time in his NASCAR career.

Aside from a two-race struggle through Las Vegas and Atlanta, Montoya has been running with the leaders all season and heads into the off weekend ranked 13th in the Sprint Cup standings. He’s just 16 points out of a Chase for the championship slot.

“Brian and I work well together,” Montoya said. “We understand each other and that helps while we race. We both want to win, and we are getting close to that.”

As a former Formula One star, Montoya came to NASCAR expecting to be competitive out of the gate. Montoya admitted many times that adjusting to stock cars was the most difficult transition in his career. But he was 20th in the final season standings that rookie year, and had shown enough improvement that Ganassi proclaimed 2008 a “Chase or bust” season.

It quickly blew up.

Crew chief Donnie Wingo, who had nurtured Montoya through his entry to NASCAR, was moved to Reed Sorenson’s team early in the season. Elledge took over the No. 42, and the duo had immediate success with a second-place finish at Talladega.

But less than a month later, Elledge was let go by Ganassi and Pattie was promoted from the Nationwide Series to run Montoya’s team. Neither was happy about the move.

The turning point, Pattie said, was a heart-to-heart talk the two had in Montoya’s motor home last July in Chicago. Whatever was said that day was enough to convince Montoya to stay with Ganassi despite attractive offers to go elsewhere, and for Pattie to turn down an offseason chance to go crew chief longtime friend David Reutimann.