Why Montoya is a game-changer for IndyCar

A million consultancy groups typing on a million laptops for a million years would struggle to come up with a better marketing opportunity for IndyCar than the one that has just been dropped in its lap by Team Penske.

Juan Pablo Montoya's arrival on the grid next year in a third full-time Penske entry is a big deal; bigger, arguably, than Rubens Barrichello's appearance in 2012.

OK, so Barrichello won more grands prix (11) than Montoya (seven), and social-media-savvy commentators might highlight the Brazilian's 2,000,000-plus Twitter followers to Montoya's 766,000.

But that ignores two elements to the Montoya deal that reinforce its importance to IndyCar. First, he didn't have to come back to single-seaters. He admitted to having offers on the table that could have kept him in NASCAR next year.

But IndyCar with Penske is where he wants to be, which stands him in stark contrast to Barrichello who, excited as he was to try his hand at racing in the US, never hid the fact that he was only there because he couldn't find a drive in Formula 1. For him, IndyCar was a Plan B.

The buzz from Barrichello's arrival in IndyCar didn't last © LAT

That Montoya chose this path over others adds an additional layer of legitimacy.

The other point is the market that Montoya exposes IndyCar to. Barrichello's deal prompted a stirring of IndyCar interest from Formula 1's fanbase, although it's impossible to measure how many of them stuck around to keep watching beyond his first couple of races.

On the other hand, if the widely-told tales of the exodus of CART's supporters to NASCAR around the time of the open-wheel split have any truth at all, then a few hundred thousand NASCAR converts have just been given a real reason to watch single-seaters again.

And of the drivers who might realistically countenance a full-time switch from NASCAR to IndyCar - a condition that immediately strikes out fan favourites like Dale Earnhardt Jr, Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson - there are few whose move could have a bigger impact than Montoya.

Montoya doesn't need to be sold to American race fans: they already know who he is. That's an advantage that Barrichello did not have. American F1 enthusiasts were obviously familiar with him, but otherwise a mention of his name might have raised the same dim glimmer of vague familiarity that you'd expect if you started talking about Clint Bowyer in the F1 paddock.

And for all of F1's prestige, what IndyCar needs right now is more fans at home; fans that can tune in to its local TV coverage, and turn up to its races.

Montoya could've been Ryan Hunter-Reay's team-mate at Andretti. Instead he joins Will Power at Penske © LAT

Viewed from just about every angle, the deal is a winner. In fact, probably the only person not doing a happy dance when it was announced was Michael Andretti, who had openly spoken of his desire to bring Montoya into the Andretti Autosport fold.

Followers of the Premier League might liken it to a classic bit of transfer window gamesmanship: imagine Montoya as a footballer having all but completed his medical, reporters awaiting his arrival at the training ground, and Arsenal preparing a jersey with his name on the back for the announcement, only to turn on the TV and see their man doing keepy-uppies at Tottenham.

Montoya said that he was attracted to Penske by the prospect of a winning car; a situation that Andretti obviously could also have offered him having taken Ryan Hunter-Reay to last year's title.

At least some of the difference appears to have come down to how they put the deals together. Andretti, having confirmed Montoya's interest, set to work on securing the sponsorship to run him.

Andretti himself said just a couple of weeks ago that the amount needed was relatively low given Montoya's stature: if the Colombian moved to IndyCar, he was not doing it for the money.

Cindric admits the funding isn't in place © LAT

Penske took the opposite approach. Having made the initial contact, it simply offered him a deal despite team president Tim Cindric cheerfully admitting that he doesn't yet have one dollar's worth of backing in place to run a third car.

In other words, let's get Montoya locked down first, and we'll deal with the money side of things later. A brave, aggressive, and clever move, and a massive demonstration of faith in Montoya.

It appears to have resonated with him, based on reports that he contacted Andretti last week to inform them that he was off the market.

Montoya described the chance to race with Penske as a "dream", and the pairing of one of world motorsport's most dynamic figures with one of US racing's greatest teams is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the series. And now the impetus is on IndyCar to step up and leverage it.

Whether the series got the most out of Barrichello's presence is debatable. The question of whether it fully capitalised on its long-desired American champion is a lot more clear-cut, and the answer lies in the fact that Hunter-Reay can still walk into a restaurant without being recognised.

For all of the potential offered by Montoya's impending return, IndyCar needs to be a lot more proactive than it has recently been in order to fully capitalise on it.

You can't argue with what the series' marketing types have to work with. A past Indianapolis 500 winner and Sprint Cup race winner rolled into one package, with an excellent F1 pedigree to round it out, and the whole thing packed into a hopefully-not-too-tight-fitting Penske race suit? It doesn't get much better than that.