Interview: What Race Day is Like For Juan Pablo Montoya

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"You get up, you shave, you eat breakfast, and you get ready to do all of the sponsorship things. This weekend I'm not going to shave in the morning, since I have to go and shave in front of all the fans. There's a lot of stuff that goes on around driving the car that a lot of people don't realize; events, meet and greets, team meetings, drivers' meetings. The drivers' meeting is two hours before the race, and as soon as that is done I go hang out and have some lunch and stretch out. 

We don't really get to get ready on race day. Our "get ready" is the green flag."

"When you're doing 200 it doesn't feel that fast. When you get up to 220 or 230 it's not that bad. Everybody else is doing it. In a movie, when you see a car going really fast it looks really fast because everything around it is going really slow. In a race all the other cars are going just as fast, so it feels normal.

When you enter a corner at that speed and need to hold the car through the corner, that's when it's hard."

"You are always on the limit of the car. You are always on that edge, but the more experience you get with the car the wider that edge becomes. The more time you spend driving the car, the easier it gets to drive that car."

"I don't. [laughs] After the race you run back to the bus, take a 30 second shower, then run to the rental car, then drive as fast as you can to the airport, then run to the plane."

"The opportunity to run for Roger Penske in the Indy 500 and the IndyCar Championship. When Roger's team came up it was a dream come true, and I had to say "yes." Going back to open-wheel cars is a cool thing to do for me. I started in go-karts. Most Nascar drivers started on dirt ovals in midgets, but I did 14 years in go karts and grew up in open wheeled cars. They're what I raced for all my life (Formula 3000, CART, IndyCar, F1), except for my time in Nascar."