SONOMA — Juan Pablo Montoya feels more like a rookie this year than he did in his actual first year.

The former Formula One driver grabbed his first — and only — NASCAR Sprint Cup win at Infineon Raceway in 2007. But he’s been winless since.

“You know, there’s been weeks, like this year when we run bad and I’m thinking, ‘This is the kind of racing I expected last year,’” Montoya said. “Last year I was running a lot better, and it’s not like I forgot how to drive, so that’s been a little tough. You expect every year for things to go a little better, and right now we’re not. So, from that point of view, it’s very hard mentally. It’s frustrating. I’m not a good guy to keep emotions away. I’ll tell you everything how it is. I’m an open book. Sometimes it’s bad, sometimes it’s good, but you know what I’m thinking.”

Montoya stands 22nd in the points after racking up on Top 5 and two Top 10’s this year.

He won at Sonoma last year after starting 32nd, the deepest starting position of any NASCAR Cup winner in raceway history. He did it in spite of never having raced at the 10-turn road course before — unless you count a three-day racing school in 1992. He did it as a rookie, a first at Infineon.

Montoya will make his second Cup start on Sunday in the Toyota/Save Mart 350. He’s one of 11 winners at the 10-turn, 1.99-mile road course. But his single victory pales in comparison to Vallejo native Jeff Gordon’s record five.

“Everybody thought ‘Oh, he’s going to come out and win the race,’ but if we didn’t win the race, we sucked,” Montoya said. “It was that simple. Anything less than a win would’ve been disappointing. But, we came out here and we proved we could do it, and we did it. This year will be interesting. Dario (Franchitti) is a good road racer, (Scott) Pruett is in the 41 car. I think all three Ganassi cars have a great chance of winning here.”

Despite the win in his first visit, Montoya says there’s less pressure for a repeat performance this weekend. But that’s not to say he’s going to roll over and settle for anything less.

“It’s a lot less pressure because you think, ‘You win it, great, you won it again,’” Montoya said. “If things don’t come out great, don’t win it, you finish third, fourth or fifth, or you get in a wreck, it happens, you know. But, the team knows we can do it and everybody knows we can do it. For the whole team, I’ll be very surprised if all three cars were not in the top 10. It’s a shame that Reed (Sorenson) is not in the car, but for Ganassi as a whole organization, I think it’s a big deal for all three cars.”

Pruett, a Sacramento native, will fill in for Sorenson. Montoya and Pruett paired up with Salvador Doran earlier this season to win the prestigious Rolex 24 At Daytona.

“I think Scott’s going to be a tough contender,” Montoya said. “I’ll tell you, out of all three drivers who will be here for Ganassi, the guy who’s done the most road-course miles in testing has been Scott. I’ve done a day of testing and he’s done six or seven, if not more. He should be really strong. I think that would be great because the 41 really needs the points.”

The pressure was insane last year but Montoya made sure it didn’t get the best of him. He will be the first to admit his No. 42 car wasn’t the quickest but rather his team had the best pit strategy. They thought the car was going to be a half-gallon short of making it to the finish line. But Montoya’s fuel conservation was enough to not only make it, but also do two burnouts during his victory celebration.

With that victory, Montoya became the first Latino to win at NASCAR’s top level, and just the third foreign-born driver in history to win a NASCAR Cup race.

His effort shattered the Infineon record for greatest improvement from starting position to win. The previous record was 13th to first by the late Davey Allison in 1991.

The Colombian native has won a race in three of the world’s most prestigious series: F1, CART and now NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series. He’s earned seven F1 wins and 10 in CART. He was also the 1999 CART champion as a rookie and won the Indianapolis 500 the following year in his first appearance at the Brickyard. Over five seasons as an F1 driver, Montoya finished sixth or better each season.

The Colombian is used to setting records.

In 1999, he captured the CART championship as a rookie, winning seven races — including three in a row — en route to becoming the youngest titleholder in series history. The next year, he triumphed at the famed Indianapolis 500 in his first outing at the Brickyard.

By 2001 he was headed to F1, where he earned seven wins, 30 podium finishes and 13 pole positions. In 2003 he claimed one of F1’s premier events: the Monaco Grand Prix.

Two years ago, Montoya shocked the racing world by signing to drive stock cars for Ganassi. The open-wheel, road-racing ace was walking away from what most consider the premier racing series in the world … to race stock cars on ovals?

Yet the odd couple — who had previously paired up in open wheel racing for Montoya’s Indy 500 and CART series titles — proved to be a near-instant success, winning first at the Telcel-Motorola Mexico 200 Nationwide Series race last March. It was Montoya’s seventh start in the series.

Three months later, Montoya, driver of the No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge, notched the win at Infineon in NASCAR’s top division. That win put him in elite company, joining racing legends Dan Gurney and Mario Andretti as the only drivers to win races in the Sprint Cup Series, IndyCar Series and Formula One.

“I would say right now it’s the biggest thing I’ve done in my racing career,” Montoya said after last year’s victory. “It’s unbelievable, actually. In open wheel I was meant to be winning, and in stock cars I wasn’t. To get our first win in our first year is huge.”

Critics will say that Montoya has done well in the races he was supposed to do well in: the road courses. But Montoya also finished fifth in the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta, his fifth career Cup start, and second at the Brickyard 400. He picked up an additional pair of top-10 finishes at Texas and Martinsville.

After a slow start this season, Montoya also earned a runner-up finish in April at Talladega, one of the hardest tracks for newcomers to master.

“I have said many times that what makes Montoya so good is the incredible car control that he has,” Ganassi said. “He is running consistently in the top 20 and doesn’t have 70 starts in a stock car. It is amazing that he became competitive so quickly.

“Although he won two races last year, it might be his showing on the ovals at Atlanta, Texas and Indianapolis last year, and the performance in Talladega (this year) that really shows that he belongs.”

Those are also the races he’s most proud of, both because they didn’t come as easily and because he wasn’t expected to do as well.

“When I came to NASCAR, I had 20 races on ovals and the rest of my life was on road courses, so road courses are natural for me,” Montoya said.

“When it’s your day, it doesn’t matter where you start,” Montoya said. “When it’s your day, everything goes your way and you just win the frickin’ race and go home happy. Hopefully Sunday is my day again. I’ll take it.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled the country Montoya is from.