Chinese Grand Prix 2010, Shanghai - Race 4/19

dannyjo22 · 22 Apr 2010 at 21:24

sunama said:
Hamilton is nothing like this. Montoya was short tempered, had a terrible sense of humour and had a high opinion of himself. Hamilton acheived more in 2 seasons of F1, than Montoya managed in his entire F1 career.

To mention Montoya and Hamilton is a little unfair on Hamilton.

Montoya had nothing like the cars hamilton has had though, you need to watch his early stuff at williams again and see how no one phased him. Montoya had more racecraft in his little toe than hamilton has got. He was mighty in F3000 and Cart as well and took zero prisoners.

He was an out and out wheel to wheel racer, which is why F1 bored him. Fair play to him for going to do something he would enjoy rather than sitting in a format he just didn't take personal pleasure from.

CaptainRAVE · 22 Apr 2010 at 21:39

sunama said:
Montoya was short tempered, had a terrible sense of humour and had a high opinion of himself.

Well Hamilton has 2 out of the 3

arknor · 22 Apr 2010 at 23:12

suprised people still take sunama seriously, his opinions are always so biased one has to do a double take to make sure they read the post properly

Owenb · 22 Apr 2010 at 23:22

dannyjo22 said:
Montoya had nothing like the cars hamilton has had though, you need to watch his early stuff at williams again and see how no one phased him. Montoya had more racecraft in his little toe than hamilton has got. He was mighty in F3000 and Cart as well and took zero prisoners.

He was an out and out wheel to wheel racer, which is why F1 bored him. Fair play to him for going to do something he would enjoy rather than sitting in a format he just didn't take personal pleasure from.

JPM had balls but his racecraft let him down a number of times in F1. The reason he left is because he got sick of been beating by Kimi.

gam3r · 22 Apr 2010 at 23:24

I liked JPM

JRS · 22 Apr 2010 at 23:33

As far as Montoya goes - he left F1 to go have fun, something that F1 really wasn't back then. Which is why he chose NASCAR, where his style and personality are appreciated. I keep hoping that Ganassi will give him a car that can deliver wins, but they haven't quite got there yet. He's still a contender at each race though, which says a lot given that Villeneuve (a former F1 and CART champion) was a complete failure when he tried it.

arknor said:
suprised people still take sunama seriously, his opinions are always so biased one has to do a double take to make sure they read the post properly

Eh, be fair arknor. He does make some very good points when he posts. It'd just be really nice if he actually read what everyone else was posting is all....

sunama · 22 Apr 2010 at 23:40

JRS said:
As far as Montoya goes - he left F1 to go have fun, something that F1 really wasn't back then.

Was that really the reason he left, or did he simply run out of options (ie. teams who were willing to employ him)? From what I remember, he announced that he would be leaving at the end of 2006, then McLaren decided that they wouldn't even allow him to complete the season.

JRS · 22 Apr 2010 at 23:54

F1 wasn't really for Montoya. He initially made some waves by going wheel-to-wheel with Schumacher and coming out on top a few times, but he was never likely to last long. He stuck it out a lot longer than I thought he would.

Going to McLaren was both fortunate and unfortunate. Fortunate, in that Williams were on the wane competitively. Unfortunate, in that Ron had a thing for Finns back then rather than young black English kids.

Also unfortunate was Ron playing silly buggers regarding when Juan could actually stop being employed by McLaren. As I understand it, he couldn't start his NASCAR career as early as he might have liked due to McLaren insisting he was still under contract even though he wasn't racing for them any more in '06.

utajoker · 23 Apr 2010 at 08:34

CaptainRAVE said:
It doesnt get much better than this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5h-HTv9d4c

i raise you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWCXZgQ3YB4

FrankJH · 23 Apr 2010 at 08:35

JRS said:
F1 wasn't really for Montoya. He initially made some waves by going wheel-to-wheel with Schumacher and coming out on top a few times, but he was never likely to last long. He stuck it out a lot longer than I thought he would.

Going to McLaren was both fortunate and unfortunate. Fortunate, in that Williams were on the wane competitively. Unfortunate, in that Ron had a thing for Finns back then rather than young black English kids.

Also unfortunate was Ron playing silly buggers regarding when Juan could actually stop being employed by McLaren. As I understand it, he couldn't start his NASCAR career as early as he might have liked due to McLaren insisting he was still under contract even though he wasn't racing for them any more in '06.

First time ever Ive heard JPM was English (after all putiing "speaking" there means something entirely different)!!!

Otherwise I completely agree

Really liked him the first two years at Williams , he looked like a total racer - I dont recall him ever really showing much at McLaren (I totally agree about the Ron/Finn thing at the time)

JRS · 23 Apr 2010 at 09:12

FrankJH said:
First time ever Ive heard JPM was English (after all putiing "speaking" there means something entirely different)!!!

You'll have to help me out here Frank, I've got no idea what you're on about!

Kenai · 23 Apr 2010 at 10:37

JRS said:
You'll have to help me out here Frank, I've got no idea what you're on about!

The way you've worded it makes it sound like you're referring to Montoya as a 'young black English kid'

JRS · 23 Apr 2010 at 10:41

Kenai said:
The way you've worded it makes it sound like you're referring to Montoya as a 'young black English kid'

Oh. Okay.

dannyjo22 · 23 Apr 2010 at 11:13

JRS said:
F1 wasn't really for Montoya. He initially made some waves by going wheel-to-wheel with Schumacher and coming out on top a few times, but he was never likely to last long. He stuck it out a lot longer than I thought he would.

Going to McLaren was both fortunate and unfortunate. Fortunate, in that Williams were on the wane competitively. Unfortunate, in that Ron had a thing for Finns back then rather than young black English kids.

Ron signed Montoya to stop anyone else having him then after 1 race started to run him down. He employed him they did all he could to destroy any confidence in him within the team. Pretty much the same happened with Alonso. They just didn't want anyone else to have them.

As I said it's a shame because on slicks with these cars he would be pretty damn good. It's a shame for him because if Williams had've run him in the team in 97 instead of Frentzen it could have been a much different story. Pretty much everyone expected Williams to carry on being successfull and they just ran out of money and steam.

sunama · 23 Apr 2010 at 12:03

dannyjo22 said:
Pretty much everyone expected Williams to carry on being successfull and they just ran out of money and steam.

Don't forget the departure of Adrian Newey (to McLaren). That would've hurt the Williams team, big time.

dannyjo22 · 23 Apr 2010 at 12:53

sunama said:
Don't forget the departure of Adrian Newey (to McLaren). That would've hurt the Williams team, big time.

Nothing like as much as Renault giving up and the complete change in regulations. Of course Newey going wasn't a help but at the time Williams but they were big enough a design team to live with it.

With all that and the Senna case, they had their eye well off the game. I'd love Sir Frank to win another constructors before he departs I always like the Williams ethos, but I can't see it happening with the funding they have.

sunama · 23 Apr 2010 at 13:13

dannyjo22 said:
I'd love Sir Frank to win another constructors before he departs I always like the Williams ethos, but I can't see it happening with the funding they have.

Traditionally, Williams have been very tight with their budgets. At the time when Williams were dominating, budget-wise they were still able to compete against most other teams (bar Ferrari, who historically always had the highest F1 budget (before Toyota came along, of course)). These days though, with so many works-teams around, its very difficult for Williams to compete against those with budgets 5 times higher than theirs.

The good thing about McLaren, was that they evolved and expanded their business interests; as a result, year on year, they increased their F1 budget. Williams on the other hand, missed this trick and just remained where they were.

FrankJH · 24 Apr 2010 at 20:14

sunama said:
The good thing about McLaren, was that they evolved and expanded their business interests; as a result, year on year, they increased their F1 budget. Williams on the other hand, missed this trick and just remained where they were.

to be fair I dont think Williams "missed" it as such - they just decided to hold onto their pure engineering background of F1 - so more of a consious decision (and one I believe Head and Williams are proud of - even though as you rightly pointed out it has held them back)

Ive always had a soft spot for Williams ever since I started watching F1 over twenty years ago - and followed the rise of DH, JV, Frenzen, JB, not to mention Prost, Senna and Mansell all having varying levels of success in the team

englishpremier · 24 Apr 2010 at 20:42

Williams and McLaren are pretty similar in their non-racing activities. I class both as Privateer teams. McLaren have just been more successful in recent years with their on and off track business.

sunama · 24 Apr 2010 at 21:50

FrankJH said:
to be fair I dont think Williams "missed" it as such - they just decided to hold onto their pure engineering background of F1 - so more of a consious decision (and one I believe Head and Williams are proud of - even though as you rightly pointed out it has held them back)

But that is exactly the point - if you want to compete at the front, you need money. By not following McLaren's lead of expanding into non-F1 areas, they were not able to increase their income and effectively got left behind. This in turn has hurt their F1 ambitions.

I would place losing Adrian Newey, losing Mansell, losing Hill, losing Senna in the same category as not expanding their non-F1 activities.

My belief is that the only way they can become a major force again, would be to "get in bed" with a major manufacturer, to gain access to a mega budget. Toyota would've been perfect, but it's all in the past now.

PS. I'm sure that Williams would've been a lot more proud, had they added to their numerous titles, during the last decade.