Juan Pablo Montoya offered some friendly advice to IndyCar star Danica Patrick, a free agent who possibly could opt to jump to NASCAR in 2010.

"I think she's got the talent and everything, but I don't think she knows what she's getting into," Montoya said when asked how Patrick would do if she made the move from open-wheel racing to stock cars, as he has done.

Montoya, a former CART series champion, Indianapolis 500 winner and Formula One star, wasn't referring to the media circus that such a move by racing's glamour girl would create.

"[The cars are] so different to drive," this Sprint Cup driver from Colombia said yesterday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon. "It's not the same feeling. When you drive an open-wheel car on an oval, you have the grip, you turn the wheel and it turns, you get on it and it goes and you get on the brakes and it stops.

"This [type of racing], it goes more with the momentum. You've got to give time to the car and you've got to get used to the feeling that you've got to go fast when the car doesn't feel right."

Montoya, having his best season since moving from F1 to NASCAR in 2006, said getting used to 3,450-pound stock cars after driving the much lighter and nimbler open-wheel cars is a challenging and sometimes frustrating chore.

"With time actually it becomes kind of normal," he said. "Like for me driving the Cup car now it's normal. I've finally got to a point where I go every week and I'm not surprised, it doesn't feel weird, it doesn't surprise me ... and that takes a long time."

Patrick has said she doesn't plan to make any announcements until after the IndyCar season ends in October.

"That's for after the season," she said last week.

Tony Stewart had to move to a backup car after crashing in the first NASCAR Sprint Cup practice at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

The series points leader hit the wall hard early in the session on the 1.058-mile oval, sending the crew of his Stewart-Haas Racing team scrambling to get the backup No. 14 Chevrolet ready in time to get Stewart back on track.

"I just got loose going in the corner," said Stewart, co-owner of the team. "Goodyear came down and was worried, but it wasn't a tire problem. Once I got out of the groove, I just ran out of room. I was staying right with it and I just needed another 50 feet to get it gathered up. I just ran out of racetrack.

"The good thing and the comforting part of the situation was that I've got a group of guys that I have the utmost confidence in when we get in a situation like that," he added. "[I know] you'll recover from this and get the backup car out and get it ready and go out and finish the session and finish competitive."

It's the second time in four races that Stewart has crashed and been forced to move to a backup car. At Pocono, he started from the rear of the field after crashing in practice and won his first race as an owner-driver.

Qualifying was rained out yesterday, setting the lineup for the race tomorrow by owner points and putting Stewart on the pole, the same thing that happened at Pocono. But, this time, putting the engine from the primary car into the backup before the rainout was announced, Stewart was not penalized for changing cars or for the engine change. It's the third time this season that Cup qualifying has been rained out.

Stewart said it was important that he got the backup car out for some practice laps. "You just [want] to make sure the package we had on the other car worked on this car," he said.

Dario Franchitti hasn't lost his touch at Richmond International Raceway in Virginia.

Franchitti, a former IndyCar Series champion and 2007 race winner on the smallest oval in the series won the pole position for the race tonight on the 0.75-mile oval. Franchitti averaged 167.315 mph over four laps on his return to the track in an open wheel racer. He dominated at Richmond in 2007, leading 242 of 250 laps, including the last 179.

Scott Dixon, Franchitti's Target Chip Ganassi Racing teammate, earned the outside spot on the front row with a speed of 166.638, while Team Penske teammates Helio Castroneves and points leader Ryan Briscoe will start in the second row.