NASCAR Cup

Fontana II: Earnhardt Ganassi Racing preview

Martin Truex Jr. and No. 1 Guitar HeroÂ® 5Team California Dreaming: Truex will be making his eighth NSCS start at the two-mile D-shaped oval. Truex has an average starting position of 13.4 and an average finish of 19.0 at Auto Club Speedway.

Edited: Oct 8, 2009, 12:33 AM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

Martin Truex Jr. and No. 1 Guitar Hero® 5Team

California Dreaming: Truex will be making his eighth NSCS start at the two-mile D-shaped oval. Truex has an average starting position of 13.4 and an average finish of 19.0 at Auto Club Speedway. Truex's best finish came in back-to-back events at the speedway when he finished sixth in both the final 2007 race and the first 2008 race at Fontana. Truex's highest qualifying effort was fifth back in September of 2006. He has also led four laps at the track located just east of downtown Los Angeles.

About Kansas: Truex Jr. had positioned himself inside the Top 10 early on at Kansas Speedway, but an untimely caution flag during a pit stop would place the team further back in the 43-car field Sunday afternoon. Truex and team would fight hard for track position the remainder of the day and eventually bring home a 16th-place finish at Kansas.

Guitar Hero® 5 Returns: The #1 best-selling video game, Guitar Hero®, returns to the track at Auto Club Speedway as primary sponsor of Earnhardt Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates' No. 1 Chevrolet driven by Martin Truex Jr. The paint scheme first debuted at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sept. 6, 2009, coinciding with the launch of the popular video game on Tuesday, Sept. 1. The video game returns as primary sponsor of Earnhardt Ganassi Racing for the seventh time this season after sponsoring Aric Almirola and the No. 8 Team for four races, including the 2009 Daytona 500, and the No. 1 team with driver Martin Truex Jr. at Indianapolis and Atlanta Motor Speedway.

***

Juan Pablo Montoya and No. 42 Target Team

The Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup: The fourth-place finish at Kansas marked Montoya's third consecutive top-five performance in the Chase. Through the three Chase races, Montoya is the only driver to finish in the top-five in all of them. In addition, his Kansas finish helped him maintain third place in the point standings and cut his points deficit to 51 behind leader Mark Martin heading into California.

The Chase Stats: After three Chase races, the statistics for Montoya are impressive. Compared to the 11 other Chase drivers, Montoya has the best average starting position of 5.7, the best average running position of 4.69 and the highest percentage of laps run in the top-15 with 99.4%. He is ranked second in the best average finishing position with 3.7 just a .4 difference between him and Martin with 3.3. In addition, Montoya has the second best driver rating in the Chase with 122.2 compared to Johnson with a 128.4.

California History: Juan Pablo Montoya will be making his sixth NSCS start at Auto Club Speedway this weekend. This marks the fourth race of the Chase. Montoya has an average starting position of 22 and an average finishing position of 22 in his five prior NSCS starts. Montoya's best finish of 11th occurred at the spring race earlier this year. He has completed 99.6% of the possible laps at California; 1245 out of 1250.

About Kansas: Starting from the 14th position, Montoya wasted no time moving through the field as the green flag waved and by lap 20 the No. 42 Target Chevrolet was sitting in the top-10. When the grooves on the race track expanded, Montoya found his rhythm and was frequently the fastest car on the track. From lap 20 on, the Target Chevrolet never looked back and consistently ran among the leaders. All but three of the 267 laps were run in the top-15 and Montoya had an average running position of seventh throughout the race. The Target Chevrolet led one lap and gained five valuable bonus points towards the Chase standings. At the end of the day, Montoya crossed the finish line in the fourth position and gave the team their fifth top-five finish of the season and third in the last three weeks.

Going for Three: The NASCAR Sprint Cup, IndyCar and Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series are all in the stretch runs of their seasons and Chip Ganassi has four cars competing for three titles as the racing world prepares to crown its 2009 champions. Scott Dixon is currently first and Dario Franchitti second in the IndyCar Series point standings coming into the season finale at Homestead this weekend. In the Rolex Grand-Am Series, Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas are third place in the title hunt with one race remaining at Homestead on Saturday. Now with Montoya making the Chase for the Sprint Cup and sitting third in the points, Ganassi has drivers vying for championships in each series that he participates in.

2009 In Numbers: Montoya and the Target team have accumulated two pole awards, five top-fives, 15 top-10 (51.7%) and 19 top-15 finishes this season. In the 29 Cup races run this season Montoya has earned 23 top-20 finishes. He has led 270 laps and averages a starting position of 12.1 and a finishing position of 12.8 for the season. They have completed 8286 of out 8303 possible laps (99.8%) this season which ranks third for active drivers.

***

CHASSIS INFO

No. 1 Guitar Hero® 5 Chevrolet (NSCS): Chassis #803. The No. 1 Guitar Hero® 5 team will bring chassis #803 to Auto Club Speedway this weekend. This chassis was last used for the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series events at Pocono (6/7/09 and 8/2/09).

No. 42 Target Chevrolet (NSCS): Chassis #819. Pattie and the No. 42 Target team are bringing chassis #819 to Auto Club Speedway this weekend. This is one of the favorite chassis' in the Earnhardt Ganassi Racing stable. It has run at Atlanta in September (3rd), Michigan in August (19th), Pocono in August (2nd), and most notably Indy where Montoya led 116 laps and had a win in sight until a late race penalty eliminated his chances (11th). . -credit: egr

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article Fontana II: Paul Menard preview

Next article Dover II: Winning team press conference, part 2

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

‘I’ll try to win, somehow’ – Can Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen fight back for F1 Brazilian GP victory?

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1

Sao Paulo GP

6 min

‘I’ll try to win, somehow’ – Can Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen fight back for F1 Brazilian GP victory?

Kyle Busch Remembered: Winning two NASCAR Cup championships at Homestead

NASCAR Cup

NAS NASCAR Cup

Homestead-Miami

1 h

Kyle Busch Remembered: Winning two NASCAR Cup championships at Homestead

McLaren’s 2027-spec front wing is making its F1 car more predictable

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1

Sao Paulo GP

1 h

McLaren’s 2027-spec front wing is making its F1 car more predictable

The wet-weather challenges thrown up by Brazilian GP qualifying

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1

Sao Paulo GP

2 h

The wet-weather challenges thrown up by Brazilian GP qualifying

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts