Montoya moves to NASCAR - why???

I was discussing with my partner last night what could possibly have motivated Juan-Pablo Montoya to leave Formula 1 for a ride with Chip Ganassi's NASCAR team. She wasn't suprised to see him leaving F1, with his pretty dismal record of late, but was surprised that he should go to NASCAR, putting forward sportscar racing as a suitable alternative.

But the fact is that the only other circuit racing series that rivals F1 in terms of TV coverage, sponsorship dollars and pure fan following is NASCAR. JPM is not about to take a big paycut, nor reduce his high profile, so really his options were limited.

ChampCar and IRL don't offer the level of competition, paychecks and exposure that NASCAR does, and plumping for NASCAR doesn't necessarily preclude Montoya from jumping into sportscar racing at some point in the future. There's very few high-paying rides in sportscar racing (Audi, Corvette, Aston, Porsche come to mind), and a comparatively small number of races each year (a driver wishing to run as many ALMS and LMS races as possible this year would at most race 15 times during 2005).

So as you can see, JPM didn't really have too many choices given his requirements, and I for one would love to see a road racing guy jump into stock car racing and kick very large amounts of ass (search this blog for "Marcos Ambrose"....)