Montoya misses his chance, still satisfied

By Jeff Hood

For the AJC

With two laps remaining in the original 325-lap distance during Sunday's Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Juan Pablo Montoya was running second and closing fast on race leader Kurt Busch.

However, two late cautions stretched the race to 341 laps and cost Montoya an opportunity to capture his first Sprint Cup win on an oval.

“It’s one of those deals,” said Montoya, who wound up third. “It’s OK. I told the guys anyway at the end, ‘We need to finish, we need the points.’ It’s a good points day for us.”

Parrott move a plus

The decision to insert Todd Parrott into the role of crew chief for Matt Kenseth following last month’s Daytona 500 is an early success.

The veteran Parrott has guided Kenseth to seventh-place finish at Auto Club Speedway in California, a fifth-place effort in Las Vegas and Sunday’s second-place finish in Atlanta.

“Honestly, the season couldn’t have started any better for us,” said Kenseth, who has never won at AMS in 21 starts. “The last three weeks have been a lot of fun. We’re learning a lot. Our cars have never been faster.

“This is as competitive as we’ve been at Atlanta in quite a while, probably since we went to this car.”

Georgian effort goes flat

An early top-10 run went awry for Unadilla, Ga., native David Ragan on lap 36 when his No. 6 Ford tagged the Turn 3 wall after suffering a blown right-front tire.

“I had just touched the wall about four laps earlier and everything seemed to be pretty good,” said Ragan, who finished 37th. “We still had some good speed in our Ford and was just thinking about what to do on the next pit stop.

“I drove in on the bottom of Turn 3 and felt it let go. It’s certainly disappointing. Our car had pretty good speed. It was pretty fast.”

Dawsonville’s Bill Elliott overcame a 34th-place starting position and a loose lug nut during a pit stop to record a 16th-place finish.

Air advertising

Lake Oconee resident Brack Maggard turned to the skies during Sunday’s race in hopes of securing sponsorship for his NASCAR Nationwide Series team.

Maggard hired a pilot and plane based in Lawrenceville to fly a banner over AMS which read: "Sponsor Scott Riggs www.teamrab.com."

Riggs, the driver of the No. 09 RAB Ford, is 10th in the driver standings three races into the Nationwide Series season despite running on a limited budget.

“I got to think about flying a banner over the track after reading an article that blasted television’s coverage of NASCAR because they talked so much about Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Danica Patrick,” Maggard said. “The story used RAB as an example of other things that need to be talked about.”

The Nationwide Series returns to action in Bristol, Tenn., on March 20.