Juan Montoya and the Talladega wild card

October 31, 12:38 AMDetroit NASCAR ExaminerJosh Lobdell

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Juan Montoya takes time to sign autographs Friday at Talladega AP Photo/John Bazemore

Race #7 of the 2009 NASCAR Chase for the Championship brings us to the biggest NASCAR track on the circuit, the Talladega Super Speedway. This is one of those races that any one of the 43 cars who start the race could win, and of course any one of the 43 cars could end up upside down in the fence. There is really no accurate way to predict what is going to happen in this race.

While Juan does have an average finish of 18.6 at this track, he did win the pole here in the spring, before finishing 20th. In practice on Friday he was just 36th fastest, but speeds have little to no meaning on this track, to be successful here one must know how to draft.

At the two Daytona races in 2009 Juan was able to finish 14th and 9th, which seems to indicate that he knows how to work the draft to his advantage. There are two ways to run this race up front, or at the back to avoid the trouble we all know is coming.

Base on what we know about Juan and his temperament I would expect to see him make bold moves to get to the front and then work hard to stay there. If he can accomplish that Juan should have a good day, if not he may end up in the big one.