Why Montoya is better than ever

Shortly after Juan Pablo Montoya walked away from McLaren and Formula 1 in 2006, McLaren's Ron Dennis was asked to appraise the Colombian's contribution.

"He was everything you'd expect him to be," Dennis told ESPN. "He was a South American, fiery, exciting individual in and out of the car. He brought more colour to the team."

You don't need to read too deeply between the lines to suspect damning with faint praise, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to not wonder how different racing history might have been if the McLaren of then had the Montoya of now.

Montoya's return to IndyCar this season at the age of 38, and after a seven-year absence from single-seaters, is threatening to become the fairytale that these sorts of scenarios always evoke but rarely deliver. Not only is the raw speed still there, but the 2014-spec Montoya has the motivation of a 22-year-old, reinforced with a maturity and patience that offsets the captivating - if occasionally misdirected - spark that defined the earlier years of his career.

F1 career ended in disappointment © LAT

It's fermenting into a potent combination, and what might have been termed an 'educated gamble' by Team Penske now looks like a masterstroke.

Montoya's comeback win at Pocono last weekend was satisfying because it was a 'real' win; one earned by qualifying on pole and then driving a textbook-perfect 500 miles. But more than that, the victory resonated because it had so obviously been on the cards.

Montoya admitted when he first returned to IndyCar that he had a lot of work to do to get onto level terms with team-mates Helio Castroneves and Will Power, but if you were to plot his performance through the year, the graph would show a steady curve upward.

For those paying attention, the real arrival of Montoya V2.0 came a week before Pocono, at Houston. On Saturday he could have won the race had he not underestimated the fuel load of Carlos Huertas ahead of him; on Sunday he fought hard with Jack Hawksworth in the closing stages before deciding that it wasn't worth risking an accident for third place.

All of this makes it tempting to wonder how Montoya's career might have looked had he not 'wasted' so much time in NASCAR. Ironically, it's precisely that part of his career that Montoya credits for his current performance.

"The good thing with who I am and my character, I can kind of unplug myself and go for it," he says. "I don't care. But you can run much smarter races [than I used to]. You can look at the bigger picture. NASCAR really taught me to look at the bigger picture, and I think 90 per cent of the open-wheel guys never look at the bigger picture.

"I probably lost Formula 1 championships and everything by not looking at the bigger picture. Now that you do, you go, 'oh' ... [he faceplants].

"You know what I mean? It's a shame you can't turn time back to be 20 again with this experience, but it's what it is."

Montoya is still not quite the finished product in current-era IndyCar yet; with street-course qualifying the area that needs the most work. Ironically, his struggles on that front have coincided with a qualifying slump for team-mate Power.

"That's one thing Montoya's taught me," Power deadpanned last week. "How to qualify badly on street courses."

Valuable lessons were learned during Montoya's years spent in NASCAR © LAT

That blip aside, the Australian says that Montoya's contribution has been a key factor in the team's current success: all three of its drivers are within the top four in the championship ahead of this weekend's race at Iowa Speedway.

"He's brought a lot of good stuff to the team from the very beginning, even when he was still coming up to speed," Power says. "He definitely has good ideas, and I think just the experience of the three of us is really helping to push the car's development in a good direction."

Montoya, for his part, shifts the credit in the direction of team owner Roger Penske, which is high praise from a driver who has also driven for Chip Ganassi, Frank Williams and Dennis.

"Honestly, I believed from how well I performed back in the day [in CART], and how well I always ran in Formula 1, and when I ran the Daytona Prototype and anything with grip, I could perform in IndyCar," he says.

"I knew it was going to take a little bit of time, but I mean, having the opportunity to run for Roger, it's unbelievable.

"I think Roger is the man. Everything he does, he's head and shoulders above anybody else. That's why everybody wants to be like him. He's an example to anybody, and also for me to be honest with you. And I'm not saying this because I run for him. I mean, I knew Roger a little bit, but now that I work with him, it's unbelievable. The way he does things, you're not surprised you're kicking everybody's ass, put it that way."

So just how far can Montoya go from here? He has already declared that he's enjoying himself so much that he expects to return in 2015, which answers the most obvious question that someone might be tempted to ask about the motivation level of a father approaching 40 who has already won in almost every series on the planet.

And the real evidence of this is apparent not in the results, nor in the perma-grin, nor in the enthusiasm. It's in the work rate.

Montoya is full of praise for his legendary team boss Roger Penske © LAT

"I've worked really hard physically and mentally to get here, and I feel in a really good place right now," he says. "I'm really happy.

"It's been a long road. [Coming back was] a lot harder than people realise because driving open-wheelers is so different than what I've been driving the past few years, and it's just ... it was going to take time.

"I don't want to jinx it saying, 'oh, it's coming, it's coming'. I'd rather be, 'let's just keep working on it'.

"I'll be honest with you. I never race for the history of it. I've never been a history buff. If you look at everything I did, what I've accomplished so far in racing ... 20 years from now, people are probably going to go, 'oh my God, this guy did this'. Right now, I don't really care.

"I'm thinking about what are we going to do for Iowa. I think we've been doing a really good job of taking advantage of every situation and learning from it."

Those who watched Montoya in Formula 1 and lamented 'how good he would be if only ...' might want to tune into the next few IndyCar races. The 'if only ...' Montoya is beginning to emerge, and it would take a brave person to bet against where it might lead.