Montoya fastest in second practice

 Montoya almost matched Jamie McMurray's pole position time, lapping only 70 thousandths of a second off from the Roush Fenway driver's qualifying benchmark. The Colombian was also more than a second quicker relative to his qualifying effort.
 
"It's a little better," Montoya said after practice. "We really don't understand what happened yesterday in qualifying. That's where it's a bit of a guessing game. Right now it's okay. Lap time-wise we're looking pretty good but we need a little bit more if we want to have a chance at this.
 
"Here's a harder place to pass than the other road courses so we've just got to be patient. It's a long race and we've got a fast enough car."
 
Montoya's crew chief Donnie Wingo was equally puzzled by the disappointing qualifying and the sudden change in pace from Friday to Saturday, and expects his driver to keep his head together coming back from the field during tomorrow's 110-lap race.
 
"We came out this morning and we haven't run a lap as slow as we qualified yesterday yet," Wingo said. "He's going to have to have a lot of patience tomorrow. I'm going to instill that in him a lot. He knows what he's got to do. He knows what he's against.
 
"He came from the back to the front in Mexico, but this is a little different here. The competition level is a lot different. We've got a lot of good road racers in this circuit. You've just got to take your time and be patient and hopefully you're there at the end. There's no doubt about it, he's one of the best racers out here."
 
Despite Montoya's pace in practice he will have to rely on a good strategy, a clean race and some luck to be able fight for victory. The worst starting position for the Nextel Cup race winner at Infineon Raceway has been 13th place on the grid, when Davey Allison won in 1991.

Five-time winner at Infineon Jeff Gordon and teammate Jimmie Johnson will also start towards the back of the field tomorrow. Gordon was third during the morning practice behind Kevin Harvick, while Johnson ended the session in 16th.