If you could see plenty of gaps and aluminum seats reflecting the brilliant sunshine at the North end of the track, does it follow that one will be able to see a changing tide when it comes to the popularity of the IRL, or open-wheel racing in general, versus the Mongolian hordes, as they are viewed by the open-wheelies, of NASCAR? (Please ignore “Bent Brent” and “Punch-drunk Jerry,” i.e. the TV commentators who hyped the attendance during Sunday’s race for the sake of theatrics.)

I wouldn’t bet the car keys and certainly not a fixed rate mortgage on the worm turning away from NASCAR any time soon. Way back when, i.e. the early days of the Winston Cup in the 1970’s, gaps in the teeth in the grandstands at NASCAR events so often and uncharitably cited by the anti-NASCAR alcolytes gave the false-toothed impression that NASCAR could never get big. For the holy rollers of open-wheeling, the stock car crowd remains unsavory along with the big, heavy and slower cars. Any indication of a faltering in the tide of stock car racing’s popularity is cause for celebration.

Since it’s the job of writers to stir the pot, I have a plan for the salvation of open-wheeling — or at least the continued rebound of the Indy 500 — beyond the constant chatter of an unlikely reunion between Champ Car and Indy’s league of racing. All IRL and track owner Tony George needs to do is sign up Stewart and Montoya to compete in his biggest event.

It might be expensive to lure them to his own Vision Racing team, but why not the next best thing? If George moved the starting time of the Indy 500 back to Sunday mornings, the dynamic duo could run at the Brickyard and still make the 5 p.m. start in Charlotte for the Coca-Cola 600. Montoya already has a ready-made ride with Chip Ganassi Racing and Stewart would not have any trouble landing a gig.

Given that Indiana native and former IRL champion Stewart has two Brickyard trophies, he was asked about the absence of an Indy 500 victory despite several years of trying. “I told the people at Chevy that I’m not going to say I’m never going to go back there in an IndyCar,” said Stewart. He added that the logistics are formidable when it comes to the Indy-Charlotte double under the best of circumstances and having done it twice he should know.

It’s not as if Tony is bored by NASCAR. He was having so much fun smoking Kevin Harvick and then Montoya in the closing laps that he was drinking from his water bottle and driving one-handed down the straights, then getting so loose coming off the corners he had to re-cock the wheel.

Montoya, too, was all smiles one year after his debacle with teammate Kimi Raikkonen in Turn 1 at the U.S. Grand Prix, the one that led to his abandoning of McLaren-Mercedes for the taxi cabs of Chip Ganassi’s outpost in the South. This time at Indy he started next to teammate Reed Sorenson and smoked his junior partner all day. He fell behind with a tire that went down during his last pit stop, dodged the blown engine of Earnhardt Jr. and then advanced to second on the fender-banging by Stewart of Harvick’s Chevy.

“It’s a very different oval, a mixture of an oval and a road course,” said Montoya, who first ran a stock car here on the road course in a promotion with Jeff Gordon in 2003. “I like it. It’s funny but I was telling my crew chief most of the times when we have problems is just past the center of the corner of a normal oval and here, just past the center you’re out of the corner.”

Given all the money, competition and, ahem, crowds in NASCAR, it’s unlikely that either Stewart or Montoya will be leaving the tin tops behind any time soon. (Jeez, the Brickyard crowd was merely 250,000 his year.)

On the other hand, once you’ve hit 225 mph down the straights at Indy in a single seater in front of a packed house and catapulted down the barrel of the shotgun at Turn 1, life can’t be quite as exciting lugging a ton-and-a-half of steel through there, even if you’re surrounded by another 20 tons or so.

So bring back the mornng starts and take another step toward promoting Indy’s now steady revival by giving guys like Smoke and JPM a chance to mix it up in the month of May with no false-bottomed TV theatrics required.