Juan-Pablo Montoya’s not the easiest person to work with and will have difficulty imposing his will on McLaren-Mercedes next year, Williams-BMW technical director Patrick Head claims.
Juan-Pablo Montoya’s not the easiest person to work with and will have difficulty imposing his will on McLaren-Mercedes next year, Williams-BMW technical director Patrick Head claims.
“Juan is a difficult person. He likes to feel everyone in the team is focused on him,” said Head. “I’m not sure he’ll get quite what he’s wanting when he goes to McLaren.”
Rumour has it Montoya decided to leave Williams-BMW after his team-mate Ralf Schumacher won last year’s French Grand Prix. Montoya said Schumacher was given preferential treatment during the race when the team called the German in for an early pit stop. At the time, Ralf had been rapidly losing ground to the Colombian, who was challenging his team-mate for the lead of the race.
“Juan incorrectly thought we had told Ralf of his actions and called Ralf in one lap early. So he was pretty strong on the radio abusing the team verbally for the next 10 minutes,” Head added. “And then he sulked and backed off and cruised to the end of the race and maybe finished 15 or 20 seconds behind Ralf.
Meanwhile, team boss Frank Williams finds the prospect of a Montoya/Kimi Raikkonen pairing at McLaren very intriguing.
“I would imagine Montoya and Raikkonen will both have a very similar level of performance,” said Sir Frank. “They both have phenomenal car control. I don’t know what Raikkonen’s strengths and weaknesses are, but he obviously looks blindingly quick. But then so does Juan, and Juan has this amazing ability to do the unexpected and find overtaking opportunities that are invisible to others.