Highlights

Montoya poised for NASCAR testing with Ganassi

(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-09-25 10:12

Colombian driver Juan Pablo Montoya is due to have a test session with the Ganassi NASCAR team on Monday following his switch from Formula One.

Montoya announced in July that he was he wanted to join the U.S.-based NASCAR series in 2007. He has not raced for the McLaren Formula One team since.

"Everything is taken care of now, and he's going to test tomorrow in Talladega," team owner Chip Ganassi told reporters on Sunday.

"He's excited about it. We want to get him in as many races as we can the rest of the year, and if that's ARCA, Busch or Cup it really doesn't matter.

"Whatever presents itself at the time we're going to go after it. We're going to take it one step at a time.

"I don't think Talladega is a good place to start, but I think it presents itself tomorrow (Monday) very quickly, and it gets it out of the way."

McLaren team boss Ron Dennis said last month at the Turkish Grand Prix that they were willing to release Montoya from his Formula One contract, which was due to expire at the end of this year, if they did not have to continue paying his salary.

"We're going to get in a testing program," added Ganassi. "I don't know if it's going to reward him much this season, but I think four or five races into next season he'll be happy we did it.

"We've been working on it for about two months, and we found out we were going to do it about two days ago," Ganassi said.

"It came down to if something was going to happen (this year) it needed to happen. Daytona is the first race of 2007, but you have to do a lot of testing in this system to learn other tracks, other procedures and that's what we want to expose him to."

Ganassi said he was surprised by the publicity surrounding Montoya's switch.

"Yeah, it's good," Ganassi said. "It's interesting. I'm happy for him. Next year is going to be a lot of fun. I'm sure there will be speed bumps along the way, but it'll be fun."