Montoya had too many chiefs

Brian Pattie became Montoya’s third crew chief of the season. And the driver of the No. 42 Dodge let it be known that he wasn’t happy with the situation.

“When I started, it was difficult,’’ said the 34-year-old Pattie. “They switched crew chiefs with Juan’s disapproval because he liked Jimmy. We started off, but not in the correct way.

“I had nothing to do with [the switch]. I told him, ‘I’ll give you all I got. I’ll do my best.’ After that, he realized that I was here for him to try and make the team better. He came around.

“I’m not going to say it wasn’t a battle for a few races. But now, a year after, I think we’re both on the same page. Some races we get after each other. Some races it’s great. In the end, we both know we’re trying to make the Chase.’’

Since Montoya moved to NASCAR from Formula One, expectations have been high for the former Indianapolis 500 winner. In 2007, his first full Sprint Cup season, Montoya won one race and finished 20th in points to claim Rookie of the Year honors.

But he sputtered at the start of 2008 and was well out of the top 12 when Pattie, working in the Nationwide Series at the time, was promoted.

Pattie encountered several bumps in the road, with resistance from Montoya the most significant obstacle. The emotional driver, said Pattie, doesn’t like change, and three crew chiefs in one season certainly qualifies as such.

From the start, Pattie emphasized dialogue, taking a straightforward, businesslike approach to counter his driver’s fire.

“I’m not an overbearing person,’’ Pattie said. “I don’t yell and scream too often. The driver does plenty of that. I try and delegate responsibility to the people around me. It makes it much easier.’’

Because of his Formula One background, Montoya is comfortable with reading and interpreting race data. On Tuesdays before race weekends, Pattie would feed Montoya information: notes from previous races, data from simulations, results from seven-post rig tests. Pattie started to learn Montoya’s tendencies (he prefers a tight racecar) while gaining his driver’s trust.

Also, Pattie had to adjust to the Car of Tomorrow, a vehicle he had never worked on.

“I never looked at the COT cars until the May Coke 600 last year,’’ Pattie said. “It was a big learning curve for myself. We tried a lot of stuff in testing. We wanted to get better performance-wise.

“We were changing stuff every week. The team was really receptive. Once I got an idea of where we were headed and what to do, we moved some people around, put some stronger people in different areas, and made the team stronger.’’

The No. 42 team finished 25th with zero wins last year, but built a foundation for this season. Montoya, driving for Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, enters today’s race 12th in the points chase, with three straight top-10 finishes.

One message Pattie has emphasized to the competitive Montoya is to not try to do too much.

“It’s been awesome,’’ Montoya said of the improving relationship with Pattie. “We have a lot of things in common. One of them is being willing to win and doing whatever it takes to win. We’re doing that. We’ve taken this team to the next level. We’re doing everything in our power to do it.

“From the engineering to the mechanics to everybody involved in this thing, we’re really bringing our game up. We’re getting competitive every week. They see that and they’re getting hungry for it.

“Pit stops are better. Calls are better. We’re racing smarter and we’re racing better. It’s great to see.

“I think anybody here, if you asked them about the Earnhardt Ganassi deal at the beginning of the year, nobody would have thought we’d even be in the top 20 in points. I think it’s nice to prove everybody wrong.’’