Hampton, GA – NASCAR’s Juan Pablo Montoya had race leader Kurt Busch in his sights, but spun his tires on the final green-white-checkered restart and had to settle for a third-place finish in the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Juan Pablo Montoya
“Once you moved up the bottom in [Turns] 3 and 4, I thought, ‘Here we go; I think we got him.’”
Montoya was running down Busch until Carl Edwards spun Brad Keselowski, bringing out a caution flag with three laps remaining and setting up a green-white-checkered finish.
He charged from fifth to second on the restart, but another caution flag for a multicar wreck set up another green-white-checkered restart.
He had trouble on the final restart, however, allowing Busch to get away and runnerup Matt Kenseth to get by Montoya.
“First restart was pretty good,” Montoya said. “Second one [I] spun the hell out of the tires. Kind of surprised me.”
Unlike several other drivers, Montoya didn’t encounter any problems with his tires during the race.
“I think when you have a good balance, I think you can look after the tires a little bit better,” he said. “I’m one of the [drivers] that used to blow tires here always. To be on the other side is actually kind of nice.
“Goodyear improved the hell out of the tire from what we had last year.”
–SceneDaily.com
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