Interview Juan Pablo Montoya

It is a wonderful spring day on the Costa Blanca. Unblemished blue sky, temperatures in February tipping up towards what we might hope for in June in Britain. To greet the weather, the sound of summer is filling the clean, clear air. A whine like a particularly persistent mosquito echoes through the orange groves but so loud it is playing the xylophone on the rib cage. The Williams grand prix operation is here testing its new car for the forthcoming season and the vehicle's presence is announced from at least five miles away, as it screams round a circuit near Valencia.

Silverstone is only 30 miles up the road from the company's Oxfordshire headquarters but one look at the sky makes it clear why the 40-strong Williams test team decided to decamp wholesale to Spain for last-minute tinkering ahead of this weekend's first grand prix of the season in Melbourne.

It is some operation they have brought with them to the warmth: five articulated lorries and a double-decker bus are parked at the circuit. Inside the pits it looks like the villain's lair from a Bond movie. Men in uniforms wearing head microphones wander round peering at banks of computers and making notes on their clip-boards. They then disappear between white formica walls into the bowels of the garage, to the place where the cars are kept.

Such is the paranoia in formula one that only the authorised can inspect the beasts at close quarters lest a visitor spot the revolutionary new sprocket which will increase speed by half a mile an hour and get on the phone to Ferrari pronto. But you do not need a close inspection for one thing to be clear about the car: for all its technical advances this motor is no quieter than last year's.

It is on test days like this that you realise what a business motor sport has become. The catering budget alone must be higher than the annual turnover at most Third Division football clubs. Formula one is an industry in which seconds mean millions, where mistakes can be financially catastrophic, where the careers of dozens of the sharpest, best remunerated engineers in Britain can be jeopardised by one touch of carelessness. It becomes obvious why the sport has shed its cavalier veneer; no wonder that over the past few years drivers have become automatons, the dedicated and dull replacing the reckless playboys of old. No one can afford the risk any more.

That is except at Williams. On the top deck of the bus outside the garage sits 26-year-old Juan Pablo Montoya. With only 10 days to go before the new season screeches underway, the tension in the garage pings like an over-taut guitar string. Montoya's quarters, though, are permeated with a fug of studied ennui. The throw-back good-time boy of the formula one circuit has his feet up on a chair and, while reading a copy of Autosport, is signing photographs and baseball caps presented to him by an assistant - without looking. "I'm busy, man, too busy," he yawns, languidly pulling up another seat for his visitor. "There's a lamentable absence of free time."

In the other room of the bus's luxurious quarters Montoya's girlfriend is playing a computer game on a widescreen television. When the bandicoot she is attempting to negotiate through a series of obstacles is crushed by a wayward flying rock she lets out a startled yelp of disappointment.

"Last year at testing I play a lot of PlayStation," says Montoya, his English heavily influenced by his years on the American Indycar circuit. "We used to do a lotta those driving games. That's why I gave it up. Man, they are not even close to the real thing. Not even close."

Bang goes a lucrative endorsement there then.

Montoya is Colombian. His father was an architect in Bogota who mortgaged the family home to pay for his son to progress up the driving ranks. And progress he did, winning international go-karting titles in his teens, moving to Europe and winning every type of junior race before ending up taking the formula 3000 title. Driving very fast, he says, was all he ever wanted to do.

But where did the inspiration come from? Colombia, after all, does not have a history of top drivers to act as role models for the speed hungry.

"Because the biggest problem is money, you can't find the budget," he says. "I was very lucky with that. My father backed me a long way but we needed sponsors. To throw away maybe half a million dollars a year is a lot of money so that your kid can play."

Fortunately for Montoya senior the kid could play very well indeed. Scorching round Europe's circuits in smaller-engined cars in the late 90s he came to the attention of Frank Williams, who signed him up as a test driver. Williams then recommended he go to America to gain experience in Indycar racing. He did more than that, winning the CART series in 1999 at his first attempt. What astonished everyone who saw him burn away his rivals - winning seven races on the tour - was his insouciance. In a world where nothing can be left to chance, here was a driver who did not have to try too hard.

In fact, he did not seem to try at all. Take, for instance, his attitude to mental preparation, the enthusiasm of the moment for most drivers. "I just get in, drive the car and see what happens," he says. "You can't do anything else."

So, no entering The Zone then.

"The zone? Why? Mentally prepare? Why? You decide in your mind before the race you're gonna pass this guy here, this guy there. Soon as the race starts, he goes the other way. When you plan something, it never works. It's simple: get in car, drive car, see what happens."

Take, too, his attitude to physical fitness. At Renault's grand prix factory they employ a former SAS man as fitness instructor, putting drivers through ferocious paces in search of the edge that might make a half-second. Montoya, though, is a stranger to the gym.

"I get fit taking my bike out in the woods."

A mountain bike? (At this question he looks as if his interviewer has finally stopped making any sense whatsoever.)

"Mountain bike?" he sneers. "No, motorbike, three hours on that you work a sweat. I've got to say I'm quite responsible. I don't wanna do some dare-devil thing 30 feet off the ground. It's more race your friends for fun."

Maybe it is practice like that which has led many pundits to suggest that, if Michael Schumacher is to be toppled this year, it is the young Colombian who will be leading the challenge. But first he must overcome another rivalry. Williams is the only leading player that does not use team orders with a designated No1 driver.

Instead the team believes in the beneficial effects of a creative tension between its two drivers who, since they have the same mechanical layout at their disposal, can engage in a genuine test of driving abilities. And creative tension is probably the best euphemism to describe the relationship between Montoya and his team-mate Ralf Schumacher. Last season it threatened to explode several times into fisticuffs.

"Which rivalry?" says Montoya with a smile at the mention of his team-mate. "You guys made it all up. No, my relationship with Ralf has improved a lot. Surprisingly. Though I'd never say we were the best of friends for ever and ever."

One look at the Williams website will suggest why. While Schumacher's hobbies are listed as cycling, tennis and playing backgammon, Montoya's is playing computer games. And even that he has just packed in. This is control freak against flibbertigibbet, steely-eyed determinist against shoulder-shrugging gadabout, roundhead against cavalier - much more interesting than Williams against Ferrari.

"It's good," Montoya says of the rivalry. "We push each other. His results are the first I look for, I take it from there. That said, testing is not about who goes quicker. It's about whoever does the job better getting ready for next week."

He stops short in mid-flow.

"Jesus Christ, it's next week. In two days' time I'll be flying already."

Indeed it all starts again: the world's most expensive travelling circus is primed and ready. And if, in eight months' time, he finds he has beaten both the Schumachers and come out on top, will anyone notice back in his home country?

"Excuse me, is formula one popular in Colombia?" he says. "In Colombia maybe 95% of the population follow formula one. It's crazy. Before it was karting, now it's formula one, formula one, formula one."

Why is that? Because a Colombian is doing well?

"There you go."

Does he, then, feel a responsibility to deliver for them?

"No," he says, frowning as if completely mystified by the concept. "No. Should I?"

So does he feel a responsibility for anything, or anyone?

"No, no, no. Well, maybe the team, your sponsors, blah blah, you do the job. But that doesn't mean you have to panic about things. Get out there and do the stuff, man. My job is to drive. That's all."

And the way Juan Pablo Montoya says it, he makes the whole computerised multi-million pound business sound easy.

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