Williams-BMW technical director Patrick Head regards Jenson Button as one of the front-runners – if not the favourite – to replace Juan-Pablo Montoya at the Grove-based team in 2005.
Williams-BMW technical director Patrick Head regards Jenson Button as one of the front-runners – if not the favourite – to replace Juan-Pablo Montoya at the Grove-based team in 2005.
Head said of Button, who drove for Williams-BMW in his rookie season in 2000: “As (BAR Honda team boss) David Richards has been saying, Jenson has a fairly strong contract with BAR. For a driver, there are two factors that you’re after – to be in a competitive car and obviously the money. If Jenson gets that at BAR then he’d have little reason for leaving.
“But we’d certainly regard Jenson as being very, very high on the list of candidates if he were available,” he added.
Many F1 observers and F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, have tipped Jaguar Racing’s Australian star Mark Webber to replace Montoya in 2005, when the Colombian moves to McLaren-Mercedes. Of Webber, Head commented: “He’s driven some good races. If he were available then he would be a candidate.”
But are the chances of David Coulthard, the man Montoya will replace at McLaren-Mercedes, filling the slot. Coulhard, a former Williams driver, has been “an enigma” to Head.
“David is an interesting one,” said Head. “We decided not to continue with him at the end of 1995. He’s a difficult guy to work out. When he’s really good he’s perfect. But then you think he’ll go to the next race and be perfect again and he’s quite ordinary.
“I’ve never managed to work out why that is. I sometimes wonder that he’s an intelligent guy and he puts so much into it, that sometimes he might be a little too intense. But the fact is he’s had seven opportunities in a competitive car and he’s been outperformed by Mika and then Kimi,” Head added.