1999 CART champion and Indy 500 winner 2000, Montoya, caused a sensation when he moved from the USA to Formula 1 in 2001, where he worked with Ralf Schumacher at Williams.
With a competitive FW23 and a powerful BMW engine, Montoya was one of the few drivers who could challenge the great Michael Schumacher in his dominant Ferrari years and drew the German’s attention to his arrival for the first time with a bold overtaking maneuver at the 2001 Brazilian Grand Prix .
Notoriously plagued by reliability issues, Williams didn’t play a role in the championship that year, but Montoya managed to take three poles and take his first win at Ferrari’s home in Monza – the one he did in qualifying at 162.9 mph in 2004 drove.
Montoya took seven campaign wins at Williams and McLaren before leaving mid-2006 and returning to the US for stints in NASCAR and IndyCar, earning another Indy 500 win.
At last weekend’s Ferrari Finali Mondiali event, an annual celebration of the brand in Mugello, Montoya finally managed to get behind the wheel of the team he has competed so hard in six F1 seasons.
Montoya got behind the wheel of a 2008 Ferrari F2008 car owned by his DragonSpeed WEC teammate Henrik Hedman. The Colombian was still grinning from ear to ear when asked about his experience in the Italian edition of Motorsport.com.
“My team-mate this year, Henrik Hedman, invited us to drive the car and it was really cool. It was an amazing experience,” he said.
“You know, it’s a car that we’ve always raced against in F1. And it’s weird to come here and drive an F1 car in Mugello. I mean, it doesn’t get much better than that.”
Juan Pablo Montoya, Ferrari F2008
With his speed and his unwavering attitude towards Schumacher and Ferrari, Montoya quickly became a fan favorite all over the world – and the archenemy of the Tifosi. But Montoya believes his Latin American flair and aggression were also appreciated by Italian fans, even if they couldn’t cheer him on on a racing weekend.
When asked what his experience of being the number one public enemy was when he won the 2001 Italian Grand Prix, Montoya said there were many “mixed feelings” among Ferrari fans when he defeated Scuderia.
“You had to hit her every week, you know what I mean?” He said. “Especially when you’ve come to Italy, the place where you always want to beat her [at] and we’ve always been very good at Monza so it was always very special.
“It was interesting because I’m Colombian and Latino and I think a lot of Italians really liked me. So, I think it was a lot of mixed feelings.
“But Ferrari always has so much tradition and everything, and after all these years actually getting into one and doing a few laps was really nice.”
When asked about his experience of sampling the Ferrari F2008, which nearly catapulted Felipe Massa into the World Cup with an unforgettable title showdown in Brazil, Montoya admitted that he had to resist the urge to deliver such a legendary, priceless chassis to the To bring limits.
“Every car is very different,” he said when asked how the Ferrari compares to its Williams and McLaren cars.
“I never thought when I left Williams that I would get into a McLaren and it should drive very similarly, and it wasn’t. It was a big shock at the beginning.
“Driving this is hard to say because the tires are a lot harder than what we drove, but the feel of the car is really nice, you can tell how well everything is done in the car.
“It’s hard because you want to drive it really hard, but you don’t want to make a mistake and damage someone else’s car! When you think about it, this car is the last time Ferrari won a constructors’ championship …”
Juan Pablo Montoya, Ferrari F2008
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