Juan Pablo Montoya leads Ragan by 14 points (223-209) in the Raybestos Rookie standings entering the UAW-Ford 500 at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway. Montoya made his stock car racing debut one year ago in this weekend at Talladega.

JUAN PABLO MONTOYA, No. 42 TEXACO/HAVOLINE DODGE: ONE YEAR AGO YOU MADE YOUR STOCK CAR RACING DEBUT HERE AT TALLADEGA. HOW MUCH HAVE YOU LEARNED? “A lot [laughs]. A lot more than I thought I would. If you look back a year ago I would have never said that I was going to win a race or even get a top-five, you know what I mean? And we have a couple top-fives, a couple top-10s, and got a win in Cup and Busch. I think we’ve done a lot. Looking back at it, I think it’s been a good year. Do you want a better year? Yeah, but can’t complain that it hasn’t been a good year for me.”

HOW TOUGH IS THE COMPETITION HERE IN NASCAR? “It’s really tough, especially when you come from open wheel when you have a bad day you’re fifth, sixth, maybe seventh. Here when you have a bad day you’re 35th. Everything I ran before had about 18 to 20 cars where here, 51 cars are trying to make the race so that makes it really exciting.”

THERE HAVE BEEN SOME DAYS THIS YEAR WHEN YOU HAVE DRIVEN HARD BUT FINISHED 25TH. DOES THAT HURT YOUR CONFIDENCE? “No. You learn that’s the way racing goes here. You’re good or you’re bad. If you have a bad car and you can finish 20th you did pretty good.”

YOU RAN WELL AT DAYTONA IN JULY. “Well, last time here we were running really good until the steering came loose and I lost the steering of the car and that’s not very helpful around here [smiles]. I think generally speaking we’ve done pretty well for ourselves. We were pretty good at the test but you never know here.”

WHAT HAVE YOU TOLD DARIO FRANCHITI ABOUT RACING HERE? “Just everything that I experienced I’ve told him. The better and faster he gets up to speed is going to be better for everybody because there’s more input that we’re going to have to improve the car and everything. It’s going to be pretty interesting.”