Montoya says win was possible

The Colombian started from seventh on the grid and quickly made it into the top five. Around lap 80 he was able to move up to third behind Jimmie Johnson and Greg Biffle, who eventually would run out of fuel on the last lap while running first and second.

However, Montoya lost ground to the leaders in the second half of the race after some adjustments on his car didn't work as expected. In the last stint he was able to stretch his fuel mileage enough to gain three positions on the last 20 laps while others ran out of gas.

"It was a good day for us," Montoya told AUTOSPORT. "This had been one of my worse tracks in NASCAR and one of my best in IndyCar, which is funny. But yeah, we had a good race car, we practiced well and we qualified good as well.

"On the last 50 laps we lost the balance a little bit. The sun came out, the track temperature went up and we struggled with that for a while. But before that we ran really well. Our goal was to finish the race in the top-ten and we did it. We should have finished a bit better, but sixth was still good."

Montoya believes that winning the race looked possible at some point, but lamented to have lost the balance on his car on the second half of the event.

"I think it was possible to win, but the 5 [Mark Martin] was quick anyway. If you look at how we ran before the final stint and where we were at that point, then you could say that we had a chance at winning.

"At least we could have finished a bit further up, I think. Hamlin finished third and we ran better than him all day. I think they improved their car in the end and we didn't. Ours got worse and that's what happens."

The Colombian currently ranks 14th in the points and he is just 43 points off from the top-twelve in the standings ahead of next weekend's road-course event at Infineon Raceway.