A beautiful rivalry
Ferrari against Williams, a great classic in the history of F1 which at the beginning of the 2000s took the form of Michael Schumacher against Juan Pablo Montoya. The Colombian driver made his F1 debut in 2001 at the wheel of Williams after winning the international F3000 in 1998 and the Formula CART on his debut in 1999.
After a phase of adjustment and apprenticeship in F1, Juan Pablo Montoya certainly didn't hold back when it came to boarding Michael Schumacher. An example is the restart of the 2001 Brazilian GP when Juancho scuppered Senna's attack on the S by taking the inside and forcing the leader Schumacher to go into the grass (the race for Montoya then ended with a sensational accident at the Descida do Lago when he was rear-ended by Jos Verstappen's Arrows which he had just lapped).
Podcast guest Beyond the Grid Montoya underlined that from his point of view it was not he who was particularly aggressive towards Michael Schumacher in that historical moment, but that it was the rest of the grid that was not aggressive: “Me harder on Michael? No – Montoya's words – the annoying thing is that no one ran against him. When the others saw him in the mirrors they seemed to say to themselves 'oh Michael is coming, let's not do shit. They got out of the wayand that made me angry.”. Another wheel-to-wheel between the two it wore out at Tosa on the first lap of the 2004 San Marino GP in Imola. “In 2004 Honda had a great engine, but Ferrari overall was the better car. However, with fresh tires we were immediately going strong and I attacked him, he threw me off the track, I would have done the same. In interviews, however, he said he hadn't seen me, he pretended nothing had happened, I would have preferred him to tell the truth, because he would have had to be blind not to see me.”Montoya added.
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