Juan Pablo Montoya Skips Interview, Draws Ire of Sacramento Sportscaster

If you believe a certain Sacramento sportscaster, Juan Pablo Montoya might be hearing some harsh words in a few weeks from California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger when the Sprint Cup Series visits California.

KTXL-TV's Jim Crandell -- the "Scoopmeister," if you ask the Sacramento Bee -- was scheduled to interview Montoya prior to last weekend's race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway via satellite. Montoya, however, ducked out on the interview just prior to recording the segment with Crandell.

Crandell, obviously peeved at Montoya, later took the footage of Montoya walking out to craft a segment slamming NASCAR for declining popularity and drivers that Crandell thinks are a little too full of themselves. Catch the video below.


In the video at 0:27, Crandell shows what happened during his satellite linkup with Montoya. The Colombian driver wraps up an interview with a local Los Angeles station, says "thank you," looks at his watch and announces that its "5:01." Montoya then smiles, looks off-camera and starts to remove his microphone and ear piece while someone in the background pleads for Montoya to stay on for the final interview.

Montoya had likely already completed about 10 interviews with other television stations via the linkup.

"You know what, I'm not going to make a federal case out of this thing, but the fact is NASCAR's popularity is dropping," Crandell said while standing next to a monitor depicting NASCAR's logo above the word 'popularity' on top of a red arrow pointing down, "Their money coming in is dropping and I think this might be one of the reasons.

"Honestly, it makes no difference if he talks to me or not. But [Montoya] is really dissing every fan in northern California who wants to hear what he has to say."

He later described how several drivers are now nearly impossible to get access to and tried to make a connection between Sacramento being the capitol city of California and that somehow having an effect on how Gov. Schwarzenegger would greet Montoya.

A stretch, to say the least.

On one hand, you can certainly understand Crandell's frustration in watching a guy blatantly skip out on an interview. Instead of having material for a segment later that evening, Crandell was left with nothing.

And on the side of Montoya, it certainly makes the Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing driver look snobbish by skipping out on a 5- to 10-minute interview. It seems easy as pie -- and generally is -- to answer a few questions from a local television station.

The exact story about Montoya's departure, though, may include details that make the ditch a little more understandable. Maybe Montoya had another commitment to get to and he had to leave the interview studio by 5:00 pm? Or maybe Montoya was just trying to make a point to NASCAR's public relations folks about running over an allotted interview time?

Regardless, neither character -- Montoya or Crandell -- seemed to come out a winner here. Montoya shows a side of arrogance while Crandell launches into what feels like an extremely emotional, personal and biased attack on NASCAR based on a solitary incident.

Perhaps Crandell was trying to make a point to NASCAR drivers that he's fed up with their actions and elusiveness with interviews, but he truly just comes off as being cranky over a missed interview.