FanHouse JuanMontoya

Wednesday night, prior to on-track activity at Chicagoland Speedway on Thursday, Juan Pablo Montoya found himself at Wrigley Field for the game eventually won by Carlos Zambrano and the Cubs over the Cincinnati Reds.

Why was JPM in Wrigleyville, you ask? Well, he was the token NASCAR publicity head chosen throw out the first pitch and sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame", in advance of the nearby race. A little cross-promotion, if you will.

Thankfully, Montoya's version wasn't as bad as Jeff Gordon's was a few years ago (horrible!), but it wasn't great either. Watch for yourself:



Obviously, the best part of that entire clip was the old guy in the stands at 0:44 that covered his ears as JPM led the crowd in singing the baseball anthem, because, well, Montoya isn't exactly Harry Carey.

I'm glad Montoya played along with the promo opportunity -- even though he finished the song like an entire verse ahead of the entire crowd.

Quality effort, Mr. Montoya, that's a Youtube keeper.

Juan Pablo Montoya certainly wasn't expecting Clint Bowyer to spin out in front of him Sunday at Pocono Raceway, but I would imagine he was expecting a little more help from his friends in red jump suits once his flaming No. 42 Dodge stopped.

Yep, it's time to play "armchair safety worker" with Juan Pablo's marshmallow roast of a crash on lap 82. Watch below and you decide at 0:33 when JPM gets his car stopped and he scrambles out if the response was adequate.



After the TV announcers jumped on the case of those safety workers that were plainly in view of Montoya's car, NASCAR made sure to note that those workers -- the ones in the red suits with fire extinguishers -- were not responsible for going on to the race track.

Troublemaker Juan
First it was his run-ins with Tony Stewart last week at Texas, and now Juan Pablo Montoya is under investigation by NASCAR. Apparently, Juan gave an inappropriate gesture to a television camera during Thursday night's Busch series practice on SPEED Channel.

I won't lie, I didn't watch the practice because, well, it's Busch series practice. The article says Juan could have thought his buddy was behind the camera, but it should state that SPEED likely ecstatic because they had more people laughing their rear ends off that JPM would give the middle finger? do something inappropriate on camera. I say, better ratings are worth the "detriment" to society that young kids watching a Busch series practice broadcast would have seen.

Apparently, there are never obscene gestures at schools until kids are 18.

You gotta feel for Juan though. Who would have thought that Busch series practice would be on live TV?

Jeff Green Likes Retro Handling
According to Jeff Green, the Car of Tomorrow handles a lot like the car of yesterday, not today. The race car has a lot of tendencies that seem to bring back memories of driving NASCAR's vehicles of the late 1990s to the early 2000s -- long before "coil binding" was a known practice in the garage area.

The Cup boys have the weekend off for Easter this week, so here at the NASCAR FanHouse, we won't be ranking the drivers according to their performance and likelihood of winning on track this week. Instead, this week is based on which driver would be the best hunter of Easter Eggs. So here it is, folks, this week's Easter Egg Hunt Top Picks.


2. Tony Stewart. He certainly is compassionate for children these days, but you have to realize Tony had no friends on the Easter egg field growing up. One, there was chocolate involved and two, everyone else was an enemy and wedgies definitely weren't out line. There's no way he wasn't the bully. I'd give up the egg over the wedgie any day.

3. Denny Hamlin. He was one fast cat, I bet, growing up. After all, he was the team champion in "hauler races" last year after a tire test at Charlotte, despite gashing his hand on the bumper chrome. The lack of pain reflex and nice quickness would land Denny a top placement in the hunt.