Stephen Holder

USA TODAY Sports

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Juan Pablo Montoya had rather ordinary objectives for Sunday's Verizon IndyCar Series opener, the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.

Any driver will take a win any time, any place. And who wouldn't bet good money we've not seen the last of Montoya in victory lane?

But that was not necessarily the goal at St. Petersburg. After 14 years driving on circuits ranging from Formula One to NASCAR, Sunday was about taking baby steps back into open-wheel racing -- which he left in 2007 for a seven-year stint in NASCAR's bulkier stock cars -- and answering important questions.

How fast is too fast? How much can the car handle? And where did all the elbow room, available in such abundance in stock car racing, go?

Montoya finished 15th after starting 18th, while Team Penske teammate Will Power took the checkered flag. It won't go down as a highlight on Montoya's sparkling resume, but there were small victories that he'll take with him.

"I thought it went pretty well," Montoya said. "We were just burning up the rear tires. ... We learned. We passed some people, some people passed us. There's a few things we have to do better. But I didn't feel my pace was too bad at the end. When I was pushing, my pace was good. I was keeping up."

When Montoya gets better accustomed to the car, his superior driving skills probably will start to take over. And right about then, he hopes, he'll be returning to the place of perhaps his greatest victory, at the Indianapolis 500.

He likes his chances there, and he's got reason to be confident after winning it as an IndyCar rookie in 2000. Also, he's and because he's spent a majority of the past seven years whipping around ovals on the Sprint Cup series.

"It's not only ambitious, it's an uphill battle," Montoya said of the switch to IndyCar. "The other side of the coin is, when we go to Indy, it's an oval race. And I now have seven years of oval experience I can use against a lot of these guys. The first oval is Indy, so we'll see what happens when we get there."

That's something less than a promise, but it's not exactly loser talk, either. Montoya is a winner, after all. His teammate saw some of his best qualities start to come out over the course of Sunday's race.

"He got the hang of it, trust me," said third-place finisher and fellow Penske driver Helio Castroneves. "At Long Beach (on April 13), he knows the place ... It's going to be a different picture of himself. It's another bullet for the team."

Castroneves is a believer. Given his commitment, so, too, is team owner Roger Penske.

Soon, we'll likely start to see why from a man who's won in CART, IndyCar, Formula One and NASCAR.

"It was fun," Montoya said. "But it'll be more fun when we start doing better."

Holder writes for the Indianapolis Star, a property of Gannett.