Montoya critical of Ambrose

Ambrose, who was making his Sprint Cup series debut, was running fourth after completing his last pit stop but made an optimistic dive on the inside of McMurray while trying to pass him for third place into the last corner.

The former Australian V8 Supercar champion went too deep under braking and hit the right rear corner of Montoya's car, which was running second at the time and was already turning into the final hairpin before the front stretch.

"Well it's hard because the guy's got a lot of talent but you don't do things like that," Montoya said of Ambrose's move.

"It's a last-lap move. You know, you don't do that so early, you've got to learn to pass one by one and you don't try to get three cars in one braking area because you're going to punt somebody off.

"They told me 'he's coming, he's coming' and I moved out, I gave room for a car-length but he was coming in so fast that he stopped against me. So, It's pretty stupid, but what can you say."

Montoya said Ambrose's lack of experience at Cup level probably made him run more aggressive than he should have and lamented falling victim of the Aussie's eagerness to prove his worth.

"A guy like that, because he never runs here, doesn't understand the give-and-take as much, and he just wants to prove himself he can race here and I was at the bad end of that deal," Montoya added.

The Ganassi driver was philosophical about his sixth-place finish after his strategy had worked to plan until lap 75, when the incident with Ambrose dashed his hopes of scoring his first victory of the season.

"We could have maybe won the race or finished second easily or we could've been in one of those big wrecks where everybody else was," Montoya said. "So that's one of those deals where you could be lucky or you could be very unlucky."

While Montoya scored his second top ten of the season, Ambrose didn't finish the race after Elliott Sadler crashed into him at turn seven in a similar incident to the Australian's with the defending race winner.