Former McLaren racer, Juan Pablo Montoya made his eagerly awaited NASCAR debut at Memphis Motorsports park in the Busch Series race over the past weekend where he contested the event behind the wheel of his Texaco/Havoline Dodge. After finishing in eleventh place after a few bumps along the way, the Colombian racer answered the media’s questions about his debut experience…

Tell us about your first race in the NASCAR Busch Series

It was pretty wild to be honest. I spun around a couple of guys, but I thought with the spotters and at least with the way my spotter works, when somebody is going or outside inside, inside, inside, inside, I don't know whether the guy was playing dumb and wasn't listening or the spotter wasn't telling him. But both of them, my front bumper was on their door and they just kept turning into me. And after the two of them, I thought, you know, either way I need to stop doing that because I'm damaging my car. But you know, you're trying to move forward at the same time. Generally I think Dodge builds a great car, we have a top five car. I made a mistake on the back straight. We were passing a backmarker and I had a spot, went through a bit more, when the car got straight, I floored it just to try to get a run on the guy and as soon as I floored it, just shoot me to the guy and I just hit him a little bit, I kept the car in the racetrack and I thought punch her or something, be a little bit careful and somebody ran in the back of me and spun me.

Is it more frustrating in NASCAR?

You've got to be patient. A car there can be five cars in front of you and it can take you 20 laps to get to the guys, just driving. You're not going to catch them in two laps. I learned that today. You've just got to pace yourself. I tried to push a little more to run flat and just start to gain time, and gaining time was the key. If I can do that, by the end, we're just there passing people. And it's really good, because you can race, you can follow people through the corner and stuff like that. It's all about learning how far you can go, I'm still really close to hitting that wall but I give myself a bit of margin. It still works. Even when the race opened up, we didn't go all the way to the wall and shoot straight to the corners, and it seemed to work here today as well.

How was your car?

Yeah, I think we had a great car. Yeah, I think it was good, you know, it's something that they told me, somebody's faster than you, for example, let them through. And I did that at the beginning of the race. At the second stint when the car went back, I lost four spots in five laps. They were shooting inside of me and I could see them coming, I said Carl [Edwards], it's all yours. He was so much faster, I was just trying to keep the tires, just trying to keep ahead of him, and let him through because you’re better off. Next time when it's the other way around, it will work. There are some guys out there that will race like it was the last lap.

What was the difference between the ARCA race at Talladega and NASCAR at Memphis?

Talladega, you know, I didn’t know a lot of people were going to work with me so I decided, I just got with Stephen [Wallace], I just pushed Stephen all day, and when I ran the back, I just said, I'm just going to stay with you and I'm going to drive forward, and it runs by itself. You need to run below people and get a run on them. It's so new. It's easier, especially when you're like 30th or something to pass the cars around you is pretty easy, you just get underneath them and drive, or you get a little bit wide and you put a nose in. I'm not used to the guy knowing I'm there. In open wheel, you put a nose in, the guy turns and you break your front wing. There's no spotters or anything. You put your nose in and the guy can tell you’re on the inside. In my mind, I doubted sometimes putting the nose in because I'm not sure the guy saw me, but he's not the guy that needs to see me, he's the spotter. So all of that is a little bit new.

Talk about the incidents on track

Yeah, I turned around a couple of guys, but as I told you, I was on the inside of them and they still turn into me. I got to a point, you know, the second time I thought, is it me doing something wrong? I thought if you were on the inside of somebody, you're on the race line. Like what happened to me with Stephen in the last race in Iowa in the ARCA race, he didn't tell me he was on the outside on the bumper and he put me on the wall and he was okay. Especially with the second one, with the 18 car, half a car inside and he's still just came in like I wasn't there. Everybody, they have that tendency here, they move to the inside but they don't brake late. It's like, a couple of times, I could have but they all shot for the inside and they braked early. I didn't want to spin people around today but I could have passed ten more cars today if I would have been more aggressive. I don't want to make any mistakes, but if you out break somebody it's up to the spotter here and the driver to give yourself a bit of room and you always see the guy when he's on the inside.

How has the communication improved between you and Brad Parrott (crew chief) ?

It's good. He knows what I can do, he’s worked with me before, he knows what I can do with the car. And he wants me to go forward, you know, don't be conservative, you're not racing for points or anything. Go forward and go hard. I did that but at the same time I tried to do that as peaceful as possible. I could take more spots but it was going to be too aggressive.

How do you feel about a top-10 finish?

If I'm top 10, yes, it's like a victory. For me, I want to win. As I told you, we have the learning process and everything, but at the end of the day, we're here to win. We're not here to say, oh, we finished 10th, it was great.