Montoya, Harvick feud not over

Montoya, Harvick feud not over

By Diego Mejia Saturday, August 18th 2007, 03:11 GMT


Kevin Harvick and Juan Pablo Montoya met today with NASCAR officials at Michigan International Speedway to talk about their incident at Watkins Glen, but apparently peace was not made between the pair.

Montoya crashed into Harvick after being pushed from behind by Martin Truex Jr on a restart with 17 laps to go last Sunday at Watkins Glen. They had a verbal exchange and pushed and grabbed each other after climbing from their wrecked cars until being split by officials.

NASCAR said earlier this week that no penalties would be imposed on either driver. In their meeting today at Michigan, Montoya and Harvick were told that they would not be allowed to go further than they went at Watkins Glen, as Montoya confirmed.

"Yeah, we went, both of us. And they said, you know, you've got to be careful guys, because that's the limit of things you can do," Montoya said.

When asked if he had called Harvick this week to try and clear the air over their incident, the Colombian replied he didn't need to apologize because he had done nothing wrong at Watkins Glen.

"No. If I would have done something wrong I would," Montoya added. "But in myself and in my team I don't think we did anything wrong. I would have screwed up on the brakes and spun by myself and taken him out, I'd say 'Hey, you're completely right' but it wasn't."

"When it's been my fault before, we got together at Daytona and it was my fault, I even called him and said, 'Hey, I'm sorry.'"

Montoya stated he would prefer to have a good relationship with Harvick and lamented that the Richard Childress driver was still pointing at him for causing the accident that later raised the animosity between them.

"It's a shame," the Ganassi driver added. "You know, I think he's a great guy, he's a great racer and it's a shame the position he's in. I think we're mature enough and big enough.

"I haven't been in this sport long enough but I've been racing all my life and I learned to get over things like this because we're going to meet again and again and again in the racetrack and it's a lot nicer and better when you have a good relationship."

Harvick criticized Montoya earlier on Friday and insisted he still has the same opinion about their crash.

"I've had a look at the tape and what I've seen is what I saw in my mirror: a car dart to the right, block and run into the side of me," said Harvick. "He drives like he doesn't know what he's doing, to be honest with you. He goes out, he can run fast but he's all over the place and every week it seems like he runs into a different person.

"In four weeks it's cost us a couple of hundred points and he shrugs it off like he doesn't really care about anybody or anything, that he's just here to race. You make him mad and it's: 'Well I've got a five-year contract and I'll just wreck you every week.' It's hard to talk to him and he doesn't really respect anyone around him."

The reigning Busch Series champion went as far as claiming that he was not alone on his opinion about Montoya.

"My opinion is pretty widespread. I'm not the only one with that opinion. Everybody's tired of tearing their stuff up for no reason," added Harvick.

To make things more interesting, they will be starting one behind the other on Sunday's race at Michigan. Montoya qualified ahead on 26th, while Harvick will be taking the start from 28th place on the grid.