Juan Pablo Montoya enjoyed his Formula 1 breakthrough with Williams, and he even became a Grand Prix winner as a rookie with victory in the 2001 Italian GP at Monza.
It proved to be one of four Grand Prix wins the Colombian scored before switching Grove for Woking when Montoya joined McLaren in 2005. He also tasted glory for Williams in Monaco and Germany from pole position at Hockenheim in 2003, plus in Brazil at Interlagos in 2004.
Montoya entered 68 of his 95 career Grands Prix with Williams, who also offered the Bogota native his first chance to sample the world of Formula 1 as a test driver across the 1997 and 1998 seasons. He moved to CART in 1999 after Williams gave Alex Zanardi an F1 race seat.
Chip Ganassi Racing even saw Montoya win the CART title in his rookie season in 1999, and they also saw him win the Indianapolis 500 in 2000. The Colombian won the Indy 500 again in 2015 for Team Penske, but Montoya has not yet achieved the Triple Crown with Le Mans.
Juan Pablo Montoya claims Williams ‘killed me’ for crashing in a pre-season test in 1998
His F1 career would also not reach the ultimate heights it possibly could have, even though Montoya thinks he did ‘a lot of damage’ to Ralf Schumacher’s F1 career. The pair both drove for Williams throughout Montoya’s time in Grove, during which Schumacher won four races.
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Montoya also did some damage to his hopes of becoming a Formula 1 driver during his time as a test driver for Williams. He has now recalled how a cheap mistake when he crashed the FW20 in a test ahead of the 1998 F1 season left Williams unable to run for ‘a day and a half’.
Montoya told AS: “Look, when Williams were testing the car in ‘98, my first test as an official test driver, [I was] being careful because we didn’t have spare parts.
“There was a chicane made of cones and I hit the base of a cone and broke two suspension arms, and they were stranded for a day and a half because they didn’t have spare parts because of me and I wasn’t even pushing.
“But I went very close to the cone, and it turns out that the cones had a [very large] base, and it fell and they killed me. That’s it, I messed up that one.”
Williams paid the price for Adrian Newey’s exit far more than Juan Pablo Montoya’s pre-season crash in 1998
The FW20 that Montoya crashed in his first outing as a Williams test driver before the 1998 F1 season was the Grove crew’s first car fully designed after McLaren coaxed chief designer Adrian Newey away. He designed five teams’ and four drivers’ title-winning cars at Williams.
Jacques Villeneuve secured Williams a Formula 1 championship double in 1997 in the FW19 which Newey helped design before joining McLaren, who won both titles in 1998 with Mika Hakkinen. Williams came third in the constructors’ standings in 1998, yet 120 points behind.
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Newey’s departure saw Williams take a conservative approach to designing the FW20 as an evolution of the FW19, along with rebadging the Renault engine Villeneuve won his only F1 title with as a Mecachrome unit following the French manufacturer’s withdrawal after 1997.
But the FW20 that Montoya crashed to Williams’ fury ahead of the 1998 season would not prove anywhere near as competitive as the FW19. Villeneuve took seven wins and 10 pole positions across 17 rounds in 1997, but failed to score a win or a pole in 16 rounds in 1998.
