Sophomore driver, Juan Pablo Montoya, defends team owner Chip Ganassi’s decision to shut down the No. 40 team.

"I think the big picture people need to understand is we did this to make ourselves better," Montoya said. "Short-term, people might think the team is crazy. But if we didn't do this, we were never going to get any better."

Due to the team not keeping itself in the Top-35 in points, Montoya feels that it was the best resolution. He also believed that locating a full time sponsor would be fairly difficult due to the team’s struggles.

"They were never 100 percent certain the car was going to make the race, so I think that was really hard," Montoya said. "There's always the question of how much longer can you actually go before you make the decision, and I think Chip did the best he could to try to run that car all year.

"But they wouldn't be able to find a full-time sponsor for that car, that was the thing that did it in."

The verdict was confirmed when Ganassi began pulling the money out of his pocket to fund the No. 40 operation. Ganassi felt that if he continued to pay for the No. 40 Dodge he would harm the two teams he needs to maintain focus on, the No. 41 team of Reed Sorenson and the No. 42 team of Montoya.

"It's rough because, the way I looked at it, was keep it running and two years down the line shut down the whole team," Montoya said. "Or do something about it now and make sure we're running better. I am sure once we start running good again, he'll find money to run a third car.

"But today, we're not running the way we need to be running and it never helped running a car with no sponsorship."