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Wednesday, February 28
Montoya ready to make waves
Associated Press
With Michael Schumacher on the threshold of becoming Formula
One's biggest career winner, Juan Montoya is lurking as a star in
waiting on the global racing circuit.
With eight more victories, Schumacher will reach 52, surpassing
Alain Prost. Montoya's total is 0, but nobody expects it to stay
that way for long.
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The 25-year-old Colombian was a Formula 3000 champion in Europe
before crossing the Atlantic to win a CART championships in 1999
and the Indianapolis 500 last year. Now, he makes his Formula One
debut Sunday in the Australian Grand Prix.
Will that make three-time series champion Schumacher even more
determined?
"As long as I sit in a racing car, I enjoy what I am doing,"
Schumacher said. "There's no lack of motivation."
But Schumacher is excited about the prospect of another hard
charger on the circuit, and sees the arrival of the aggressive and
cocky Montoya with the Williams team as making pursuit of his
ultimate goal even more interesting.
"I always said that it is one thing to win the world
championship with Ferrari," said Schumacher, who last season gave
the automaker its first F1 driver's title since 1979. "It is
another to start an era at Ferrari like we have seen with Williams
and more recently with McLaren."
At 32, Schumacher still has plenty of time to pass Prost, and
two more championships would match the career total of F1 pioneer
Juan Manuel Fangio. A victory Sunday in Melbourne would be
Schumacher's fifth straight, matching the F1 record of Nigel
Mansell.
Montoya should help Williams challenge the recent two-team rule
of Ferrari and McLaren, which won the driver titles with Mika
Hakkinen in 1998 and 1999.
Ferrari and McLaren have combined to win the last 19 races and
the last three driver's and constructor's titles. Williams has
become the best of the other nine teams after winning five
constructor's titles in the 1990s.
Will Montoya help return the team to its former greatness? He
hopes he can make the adjustment to the F1 cars, the most
sophisticated racing machines in the world.
"I am a better driver for going to the United States," Montoya
said. "Sometimes I overdrove and I learned in Champ cars that you
can make the car work for you."
Montoya is expected to develop an intense rivalry with another
Schumacher, Ralf, his Williams teammate and Michael's younger
brother.
"I get on fine with Ralf and that is good. If he wants a good
relationship, that's nice but, if not, that's OK," Montoya said.
"You don't have to be friends. You are racing against each
other."
The other new name in F1 this season will be Michelin, which
returns after a 16-year absence. The French tire manufacturer will
be equipping five teams -- including Williams -- with both Ferrari
and McLaren still running on Bridgestone.
Michael Schumacher, who will team again with Rubens Barrichello,
seems relaxed after giving Ferrari its first champion since Jody
Scheckter. But another title might not come so easily because
Hakkinen promises to be more focused.
|  | | Rookie Juan Pablo Montoya is under pressure to produce in his first year of Formula One competition. |
Hakkinen, had plenty of distractions last year, including
becoming a father. But his biggest problem was the breakdown of his
car in the first two races, and he and teammate David Coulthard
never did bounce back.
"The beginning of last season was such a bad time," Hakkinen
said. "It shattered my confidence and motivation."
"I got over it at one point of the season, but I could not
recover."
Like many, Scheckter is betting it will be a three-team
competition when the 17-race season opens.
"It's nearly always been the case that a couple of teams have
dominated Formula One, but I think the guys at Williams will be
making it a three-team fight," he said during an F1 preview tour.
"The teams with the best guys and the most money will always be on
top."
The average team budget this season will be about $100 million,
about five times what's spent by top teams in NASCAR.
Two big-money teams should be better: British American Racing
and Jaguar.
This a watershed season for BAR, which scored no points in its
disastrous 1999 debut but managed a respectable fifth in the
standings last season. Jacques Villeneuve, the 1997 series
champions, will be pressed like never before by new and talented
No. 2 Olivier Panis.
"The idea is to have the two drivers pushing each other," said
team boss Craig Pollock. "The harder they push each other, the
faster the car is going to go."
Jaguar had an abysmal 2000 -- its first after buying out Stewart
Ford -- and finished ninth among 11 teams. American racing great
Bobby Rahal has stepped in to run the day-to-day operation with
three-time series champion Niki Lauda overseeing the Ford branch
that runs Jaguar.
"Let me state now and for the record, our aim for 2001 is to
achieve respectability," Rahal said.
He hopes to get that from the return of Eddie Irvine, who's
being joined by rookie Luciano Burti.
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