Montoya Confident, But Wary, As New Challenge Dawns  

 

By Timothy Collings

After two years in Formula One, this is the big one for Juan Pablo Montoya: the real test. Can he shake off a reputation that suggests he is good fun, a bit wild, and fast, but inconsistent, and stand toe-to-toe with the championship contenders? Or is 2003 going to be just another false dawn, another season of high hopes that evaporate as the months pass by? His recent triumph in the Monaco Grand Prix was a hint that he is growing up… but can it last. Monte Carlo, after all, is Europe’s capital for gambling, and the high life, and broken dreams.  

Last year, he secured pole positions by the handful. He escorted one of the prettiest girls in the paddock around the globe and up the aisle and added a round zero to his tally of race victories. After 34 Grands Prix, he still had just one win to his name, an emotional success on a hot afternoon at Monza in the Italian Grand Prix of 2001. His wife, Connie, dearly loved the idea of seeing him work on that figure. That is why she was so happy in the Mediterranean principality when Juan-Pablo steered his Williams-BMW over the line first in the 61^st Monaco Grand Prix. It was a landmark win. A breakthrough. There were tears from Connie, but just a meaningful grin from the bad boy from Colombia. He was happy, but he wanted more.  

Ten pole positions and one win tells its own story of 2002. As a Colombian, with a record of speaking his mind and walking towards, rather than away from, confrontation, Montoya, 27, knew what was required from him in 2003. He needed to find the edge in his form and consistency and he needed a car to match his lavish gifts behind the wheel. The way he drove to win in Monaco made people think he had found the lot. And with Connie in tow, most observers were troubled by pangs of serious and guilty envy.  

Like Sir Frank Williams, the paraplegic team-owner who runs his outfit from a wheelchair, Montoya played a cautious hand in the pre-season mind games, the hype and hysteria that always preceded the opening race at Albert Park in Melbourne last March. “I know what I have to do,” he conceded. “I know I have to raise my game as far as I can. It’s not only to show people what I can really do. It is mainly for myself. For me it is like a personal challenge. But, even with a good car, I think it is too early to say if we have a chance at the championship or not.”  

Montoya, of course, was the other man, the ‘third man’, at Williams in 2000 when the popular young ‘spice boy’ Englishman Jenson Button secured his maiden Formula One drive, following a dramatic pre-season shootout against Bruno Junqueira of Brazil. While it was a great chance for Button, he always knew that Montoya, then biding his time in the United States, was heading home to take up permanent residence with the BMW-powered team.  

Thus, Montoya arrived in F1 after winning the 2000 Indianapolis 500 and the 1999 CART championship, successes that earned him popularity across America, boosted his confidence and gave him the mental toughness required to challenge Michael Schumacher for the ultimate prize in motor sport. He finished second in the Australian Grand Prix last year, behind Schumacher’s all-conquering Ferrari in which the German went on to deliver a season’s record 11 Grand Prix triumphs and a fifth drivers’ world championship. And he should have won in Australia this year with more luck and better finishing ability. When he needed it, it deserted him.  

Last year, Montoya finished third in the title race, a decent effort in a season when his Williams-BMW team secured second place in the constructors’ championship, but not one that left many smiles on the faces of the men from the Oxfordshire village of Grove. If the Ferrari F2002 was clearly a better car than the Williams-BMW FW24, it could not lay claim to enjoying superior horsepower, but that advantage did not translate into successes for Montoya or his team-mate Ralf Schumacher, the younger brother of the five-times world champion Michael Schumacher, of Germany.   

“We did not have much advantage, if any, over Ferrari at the end of the year,” Montoya said. “They were as quick as us on the straights. But BMW has done a fantastic job so far and this year we have a lighter, more powerful, higher-revving engine. It means that BMW are going in the right direction. Williams is going in the right direction, and so is Michelin. So it is a matter of putting everything together to get the wins and to fight for the championship.”

This year’s Williams FW25 is a totally new car with little or nothing left over from its predecessors. For Montoya, this has meant a new challenge because he cannot make adjustments using the data accumulated through the last two years with two evolutionary chassis. “The car is completely different,” Montoya said. “There is nothing similar to the cars before. It is going to be a new start for Williams with this car. It is going to take a lot of work to understand what the car likes and doesn’t like. 

“It’s up to the engineers and us (drivers) to go through everything on the car and find the sweet spot of the car -- the way the car likes to be; what is it like on high ride heights and low ride heights, with pitch, with no pitch. Everything is brand new. It is a completely new exercise.”

 Like the car, engine and tyres, Montoya believes he, too, is going in the right direction and making steps forward. The team management told both Montoya and team-mate Ralf Schumacher to raise their game and work in a manner more like that of Michael Schumacher, who motivates the entire Ferrari team with his actions on and off the track. It was a message that has had some effect even if it was not entirely welcomed. Some observers may have confused the Colombian’s relaxed approach to life, outside the Williams garage, as a reflection on his work ethic in it. Montoya believed he may have been misunderstood.

“I always work as hard as I can,” Montoya explained. “If I tried to do something new, I was pushing my hardest. Now, seemingly, it means that I wasn’t trying hard enough before. But I always push myself as hard as I can in every single aspect. I always have… Every day that I drive the car, I am trying to get to a different level. I am pushing myself and pushing the team as hard as I can. If you really want to know where the limit is, you are going to make mistakes. If you don’t see mistakes, it is because you are not trying hard enough: You are not trying to achieve anything else. I am happy with the way I am driving.”

That said, he is a realist, too, and makes no claims to suggesting that, even with a new team approach to the season, the Williams-BMW combination can remove Ferrari from their pedestal. “The way everything is going, you can go from Kimi (Raikkonen) to Ralf (Schumacher) and say anybody can do it,” he said. “Michael (Schumacher) obviously has the best chance because they are there already and already have the package. McLaren’s intermediate car looks strong and the new car will probably be quick. We’ve got a pretty good car so it is important, at least, to stay second in the constructors’ championship and then try to improve on that.”

Frank Williams himself, not a man for wasting words, was happy to say little as the sun went down in Monte Carlo on June 1. He knew one win was not going to make a summer for his team or his hot driver, but he knew winning in the gamblers’ paradise, for the first time in 20 years, was important. It was a team breakthrough, his first triumph since the bullish Finn Keke Rosberg grabbed an unexpected Monaco win in 1983, and a day for relief and hope. 

Montoya may have ended a personal famine of 25 races without a victory when he seized his victory, but he also killed a 20-years jinx for the Williams team. A flawless drive, much of it under great pressure, two excellent pit-stops and a calm conclusion when his engine's performance was causing anxiety in the closing laps brought him his second career success.  So, Monaco, 2003, was added to Monza, in 2001, on a list of triumphs that is, so far, insufficient for a man of such lavish talents.

His win also banished some of the critics within and without the BMW-powered team and revived his and their ambitions in this year's drivers' and constructors' world championships. "We are on the march again," said Sir Frank Williams afterwards, as the champagne began to flow. "Our record here had been so poor, for so long, it was a source of embarrassment." His troops, he said, deserved their long-awaited Monegasque party. Williams and his partner Patrick Head, having seen Monaco leads lost in the past, endured agonies before Montoya finished and delivered their first win this year and first in 22 outings since the Malaysian race last season. "I can't remember our first two wins here," said Head. "They were too long ago. But this one is very, very special." For him like Williams, it was a welcome day of success on a very special circuit. It was a new dawn. The big question remained, however: Is this the beginning of the real thing for  Montoya or just another flash in the pan?

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