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Inside Motor Sports
Posted: Tuesday May 30, 2000 03:50 PM Juan Montoya steered the only CART team in the Indy 500 to victory By Mark Bechtel
MEMORANDUM
Sly, Read in Variety that you are developing a movie about open-wheel racing. Now, we're not saying you don't know what's what in Hollywood, but we seem to recall a certain film called Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. So allow us to offer a little advice: Your movie is going to need the requisite dashing, brash young driver who will be great if he can only harness his raw, natural ability. (See Days of Thunder and its $82.7 million domestic gross.) So read up on Juan Montoya, the defending CART champ who ran away with the Indianapolis 500 in his first try on Sunday.
Now here's the great part, Sly. When our lead character goes into the most important race of his life and people are wondering if a guy who doesn't seem to know that cars have brake pedals can win the Big One, he pulls it off and it actually is believable. Montoya's performance on Sunday, on a tricky track at a distance he had never won at, was dominant. (The longest of his seven CART wins was 225 miles.) From the moment the green flag fell, Montoya raced as if his life depended on winning. Starting second, he caught pole sitter and IRL champion Greg Ray on Lap 27 and by Lap 50 had amassed a lead of at least 20 seconds on the third-place car. At 200 mph, that means Montoya led 31 of the other 32 cars by a mile. The only thing missing was drama. With 21 laps to go Montoya blew by teammate Jimmy Vasser, who had taken the lead by skipping a chance to pit under caution, and won by a cozy 7.2 seconds over 1996 Indy 500 champion Buddy Lazier. All that came a day after Montoya and Vasser ran in the CART race in Nazareth, Pa., finishing fourth and seventh, respectively. So come on, Sly. We just want to see this story done right. Oh, and we wouldn't mind an executive producer credit. Issue date: June 5, 2000
For more Inside Motor Sports see this week's issue of Sports Illustrated, on newsstands Wednesday, May 31. Click here to subscribe to SI.
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