Montoya forgives McMurray for crash in Vegas

Juan Pablo Montoya says he has accepted teammate Jamie McMurray's apology for the wreck that collected both last weekend and that he told McMurray, "Let's move forward."

The two crashed while running side-by-side at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Montoya blamed McMurray, his new teammate at Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, for the incident and was on the radio criticizing McMurray's driving to his crew. Montoya also was critical of McMurray in an interview with Fox during the race broadcast.

Montoya, according to a story at autosport.com, said he and McMurray traded text messages after the race. McMurray texted Montoya: "Hey I'm sorry, I'm sure you're mad at me. You want me to call you and talk through things?"

Montoya said he replied: "Don't worry. It happened. Yes, I was real mad, but let's move forward."

"It's frustrating," Montoya said during a media event before his pro-am celebrity golf tournament in Bogota, Colombia, "because you r teammate is the guy you've got to race the smartest. You have to give each other a lot of respect because you don't want to end up in a bad situation like last Sunday."

Crackdown begins for starting, pulling out

NASCAR is taking a tougher stance on cars that intentionally pull out of races after only a few laps.

Starting last weekend at Las Vegas, series officials announced that the first Cup car that falls out of the race (not related to an accident) will be held for inspection.

The issue of cars starting and then pulling off after a few laps is not new to the sport but grew more frequent last season. NASCAR's extra attention to this matter is a way to regulate those teams that put enough effort into qualifying for a race but make little or no effort to run the full race.

Dave Blaney was running at the finish only once in 30 races last season for PRISM Motorsports, a team co-owned by Phil Parsons. Although Blaney's average finish was 41.0 in a 43-car field, he still collected more than $2.3 million in winnings. Joe Nemechek failed to finish 27 of 30 races last season, averaging a finish of 39.5, and topped $2.4 million in winnings.

On Sunday at Las Vegas, Blaney finished 29th, three laps off the leaders. It marked the first time since last year's Coca-Cola 600, where he finished 28th, that he saw the checkered flag.

The first car out of last weekend's race was Aric Almirola, who ran 23 laps. The reason listed for his early departure was vibration.