Chip Ganassi is already congratulating himself, surely, for hiring Juan Pablo Montoya as Montoya, along with Scott Pruett and Salvador Duran finished first in the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona endurance race this past weekend. Montoya was a huge part of that win, he pulled the Chip Ganassi Racing's Lexus Riley Daytona Prototype into the lead for the first time during the first three hours of the race and again with under three hours to go.

The team completed 668 laps and 2,378 miles on the road course around Daytona. Just to give you an idea of how far that is, I live in Colorado and Ron lives in Kentucky. In order to go 2,378 miles, I'd have to drive from my Colorado to Kentucky and back again, and there'd still be 48 more miles to drive after that.

With this win Montoya joins the great Mario Andretti as the only drivers who have won the endurance race at Daytona, the Indianapolis 500, an American open-wheel championship, a Formula One race. Montoya hopes to add to this with a win at the Daytona 500, something Andretti accomplished in 1967.

While no one expects Montoya to win that race this year, it marks hopefully a strong start to his latest addition to his racing career as a stock car driver in the NASCAR Nextel Cup circuit. And I'm sure Montoya will be glad to be driving a vehicle where you can actually see the flames when the car catches on fire, and hopefully he'll find it more fulfilling than his last few years on the Formula One circuit.

For the record, Jeff Gordon's team finished third after suffering a prolonged pit stop during the final half-hour of the race, due to brake problems that caused an off-road excursion.