LOUDON, N. H. — Juan Pablo Montoya has a bottle of French wine at home that was given to him as a gift from a friend in Malaysia, who told the driver to save it for a very special occasion.

One problem: Montoya doesn’t drink alcohol.

Should he become the first foreign-born driver to win a NASCAR championship, Montoya is willing to make an exception.

“It’s a beautiful French wine,” he explained. “I don’t like wine. But I would drink that wine if we win.”

Don’t pull the bottle opener out just yet—Montoya still has a long way to go in his quest for a Sprint Cup Series title. But the competition considers the Colombian the darkhorse of the 12-driver Chase for the championship field.

The 10-race title Chase begins today at New Hampshire Motor Speedway (2 p. m., Ch. 7), where Montoya will make the 100th start of his Cup career. It falls on his 34th birthday, and Montoya will start from the pole, which he won with a record- breaking lap. He also paced all three practice sessions, putting his No. 42 Earnhardt Ganassi Chevrolet on top of the leaderboard all weekend.

Could the stars be aligning to send Montoya to Victory Lane for just the second time in the Cup Series since his stunning decision to leave Formula One?

He isn’t saying.

But after crew chief Brian Pattie convinced him to spend the summer racing toward their goal of making their first Chase, Montoya is ready to run free and fast for wins.

When he left F1 midway through the 2006 season to reunite with former boss Chip Ganassi, Montoya didn’t expect the transition to take so long. He had brief success in his 2007 rookie season, when he won on the road course at Sonoma, but the past three years have otherwise been a slow process toward making his No. 42 team competitive.

“We look at setups we run now compared to where we were a year ago and say, ‘How could we be so dumb?’ ” he laughed.

Montoya admits to fits of impatience as he waited for Ganassi to get his NASCAR team up to speed. He’d never really experienced a rebuilding effort, winning the Indianapolis 500 and CART championship during his brief stint with Ganassi, then moving on to a successful F1 career.

But worn out by the politics of F1, he made the jump to America’s most popular racing series.

He dominated at Indianapolis in July, but a late speeding penalty took him out of contention. It took an incredible effort from Pattie to calm Montoya down and get him to bring his car to the finish in one piece without making a second devastating move out of anger.

That afternoon was a pivotal moment in Montoya’s season, because it saved him from falling out of Chase contention.