NOTE: Chip Ganassi announced Sunday morning at Chicagoland Speedway that Juan
Pablo Montoya has signed a multi-year deal with the organization to compete
in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series beginning in 2007. Montoya will drive the No.
42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge Charger.

CHIP GANASSI (Owner Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates)

"As some of you may or may not know, this guy and I have had some success in
the past. He called me up a few days ago and said, 'hey, you looking for a
driver?' He said, 'I want to drive that car.' I said, 'do you know which car
I'm talking about?' He said, 'yeah, the 42.' He said, 'yeah, I want to drive
it.' I said, 'OK, fine.' That was about the extent of our conversation, but
we have a great history together. We've had a lot of fun together over the
years, and I couldn't be more happy. I think he represents everything our
team is about. It's about performance. It's about innovation. It's about
partnership. It's about integrity. Those are the four things that our company
is built on, and that's what this guy stands for, most importantly the
performance part of that. I couldn't be happier ladies and gentlemen. I think
everyone knows the driver market in this formula right now is tight. We
looked outside the box a little bit. The last thing Juan said to me was 'I
want to get back in racing. That's why I want to come do this.' That's all I
needed to hear. He's known worldwide as Juan Pablo Montoya. I call him Juan.
He's called me a few choice names over the years and most of them are not
printable. I'm pretty happy to introduce the guy. Here he is."

IS THIS BREATHING LIFE INTO THE 42 TEAM? "Did you see that team yesterday in
the Busch race? I wouldn't call that a dead race team. Any time you lose a
driver, we're fine with Casey and what he's doing. Every car owner wishes
great drivers would be available to you all the time. I think the nicest
thing from a team owner point of view is as our team matures better drivers
are available to us when a situation like this comes along. I'm honored the
guy calls me on the phone and says he wants to drive my car. Any owner would
like to hear that. Anyone would love to hear it from this guy. Things happen
for a reason I guess. I'm just honored that people call up and want to drive.
I will say this. Better drivers called this year than a year ago, and better
drivers called last year than the year before that. That's all you can hope
for as a team owner."

COMMENT ON MONTOYA TAKING A PAY CUT "He told me what he wanted to make and
what did I say?" MONTOYA "That's what you get. It was that simple. I said,
'this is what I'm looking for, and Chip said OK.' I'll be honest with you
guys. It took us an hour to close everything. It was that simple. I'm
straight with him, and he's straight with me and things just work out great.
That's what I'm here for. I want to come back racing. How close the racing is
here and how exciting it is and how the fans like it. It's hard to turn it
down."

HOW WILL YOU GET MONTOYA ELIGIBLE FOR THE DAYTONA 500? "We've looked at the
Formula One schedule and we're working close with everyone involved making
sure it's our goal to be ready for Daytona obviously. When his season ends I
think we can squeeze a couple of things in there. It's going to be a busy
winter."

HOW WILL YOU GET MONTOYA UP TO SPEED IN NASCAR? "It'll be at his own pace.
I've seen this guy adapt to cars and adapt to tracks like no other driver
I've ever seen. I don't have any question that he'll be able to adapt to a
Cup car and Busch car. He'll be doing Cup and Busch. I don't know if we said
that. It's not going to be a walk in the park. It's going to be a lot of work
over the winter. It's going to be a work in progress in 2007. It's a great
challenge. What a better opportunity than to have someone like this in your
car and take on that challenge together? I can't think of a better
opportunity in sports."

IS TEXACO A PART OF THIS DEAL? "They are, and we've got to be careful with
that because the current car that Juan is driving is sponsored by Mobil.
We've got to be careful what we say about Texaco, but they were lock step in
this whole process. They would be here today, but I think there's a soccer
game in Germany."

HOW REFRESHING IS IT TO YOU TO HAVE MONTOYA COME TO NASCAR? "It's refreshing
in that it sort of validates what we're doing. Not everybody understands our
team from time to time, but I know this guy does and it validates what we're
all about and what we're trying to do. We've always been about racing and
everything else is secondary I guess. We want to race. We want to be out
front. We want to win races, and we want to do what it takes to do that.
There's not a car owner on the planet who wouldn't want this guy in his car
at any level, in any series in any car. This is the guy you want."

COULD MONTOYA RUN THE INDY 500 IN ONE OF YOUR CARS? "There's no plan for
that. We have a tall order. He's going to have a steep learning curve with
what we have on tap, so I would think that's not on the table right now. I
think the scheduling of the races would make it more difficult to do the
double."

HOW DID THE TEAM REACT TO THE NEWS? "Everybody was surprised, but yet they
were pleasantly surprised. Obviously our team has its up and downs like any
other team. Everyone was concerned what kind of driver was going to be
available to us. We think we have the cars, people, engines and drivers and
it's great to augment it with a great driver like this guy. They were all
very positive, very positive."

***

JUAN PABLO MONTOYA (2007 Driver No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge Charger)

"When people think of moving from Formula One to NASCAR, some people think
I'm crazy, but I think it's exciting. I think it's a great challenge for my
career. Coming here is probably going to be my toughest challenge ever. I
think when you go watch the races and follow it you know one weekend you can
be up front and the next weekend you can be terrible. You have 36 races and
race against really great guys, and I think sometimes people don't know how
tough it is out here and how many great drivers are out here. To come here
and be part of it and learn is going to be exciting. I think a lot of people
are going to build this up and say I'm going to come here and win and do
great things. Of course, I want to do that. I think it's going to be a lot
tougher than people think. I think the challenge to drive a Cup car is going
to be tough. When the offer came and I saw the racing you guys do here, I was
really ecstatic about it. I'm glad to be here. I think Chip has great guys
around the team and to join them... They've already told me 'whatever you
need' and I'm excited about that. To learn and deal with myself more as a
driver, I think it's just great."

WHAT KIND OF TESTING SCHEDULE IS PLANNED TO GET YOU UP TO SPEED? "First of
all I've got to finish the Formula One season. One of the reasons I wanted to
talk to Chip about coming here, I know it was a road course when I drove
Jeff's car and it was a lot of fun. You could push the car. You could slide
the car, and it was really friendly to me on the road course. That was really
exciting to me. I think I'm going to have a very busy winter. I'm going to
finish the Formula One season this year, and from there we'll just take it,
do as much testing as we can."

WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE FORMULA ONE OPTIONS? "I had a couple of options in
Formula One and they were completely open for me to sign. I think coming here
and starting as a rookie again, and it's going to be a brand new experience.
I'm working with Chip again, and we've had a lot of success together before.
Being here in America is exciting. I couldn't turn it down. A couple of years
down the road maybe this option wasn't going to be available, and I didn't
want to throw it away."

HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW ABOUT NASCAR? HAVE YOU PLAYED SOME OF THE VIDEO GAMES?
"I watched a lot, even before I started talking to Chip when I was thinking
about it. I love racing. I always follow racing. Racing here is so close and
exciting. It's a good reason to come. I was talking to Casey about 20 minutes
ago and he said, 'I've done a lot of racing, but I've never had so much fun
like here.' That's the reason I came here. I came here to learn and have fun.
It's going to be tough. It's going to be hard racing. Hopefully I can learn a
lot and at the end of the season get good results. It's a long season of
racing, but we have long seasons when you look at the number of miles we do
in Formula One cars. We spend the same amount of days in the car there and
here, but here we are racing. When you go to Australia from my house it's 27
hours on an airplane."
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