Formula One: Montoya Driven By Team Unity

Juan Pablo Montoya had a spring in his step in the Albert Park paddock yesterday as he prepares to make his McLaren-Mercedes debut in Sunday's Australian grand prix.

Yet the Colombian knows his career is at a crossroads. When he replaced Jenson Button in the Williams squad in 2001, many predicted that he would be the man seriously to challenge Michael Schumacher's domination at the front of the field. Yet overall Montoya has so far failed to deliver with only four Williams victories.

Now he hopes that the new McLaren-Mercedes MP4-20 will live up to its pre-season testing form and put him in a position to challenge in the company of Kimi Raikkonen, a partnership that could be the most exciting since Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost played out their acrimoniously volatile double act with McLaren in 1988-89.

"I think it will be nice," said Montoya, downplaying any suggestions that his partnership with the impassive Finn might be in any way counter productive. "With Ralf [Schumacher, his team-mate at Williams] every time he pushed me we managed to get more and more out. I think it will be exciting to get more out of myself, get to the point where I am going to push Kimi and he is going to push me and raise the level of the team.

"I think people forget because they want to make this Raikkonen-Montoya thing going on. But the point is, why are we there? Before we worry about who's going win, we've got to try to beat everybody else, including Michael and Ferrari. My goal and his goal is to beat Ferrari or whoever is at the front.

"I saw Senna and Prost racing for McLaren and it became obvious that they really hated each other. It's not going to be like that between me and Kimi this year because we get on really well and like each other."

Montoya's decision to move from Williams was made immediately after the 2003 French grand prix where he concluded that the team had favoured Ralf Schumacher in terms of his pit-stop strategy when they were battling for the lead. At the time his career strategy seemed impulsive, but it gradually became clear that his relationship with Frank Williams and the team co-founder Patrick Head was steadily deteriorating.

"I don't know what they wanted," he said, "I was winning races. He [Williams] just complained I was overweight and unfit and just whinged about it. When I got into Formula One everyone said I was fat. I weighed less then than I do now. It's pretty demotivating. Now I have a [McLaren] trainer and we had a long talk about what I like doing and what I hate when training. He has built a programme round that and it's fun. I'm enjoying it and I feel much better for it.

"It seems to be typical of life at McLaren and very different from Williams. I'm not saying that one is right and one is wrong. They're just different ways of trying to achieve the same result and win races. So far, I have to say this seems to suit me."

McLaren pride themselves on giving complete parity of equipment and opportunity to their drivers. They have never adopted the current Ferrari strategy of favouring one competitor over the other, a format which has worked to Michael Schumacher's advantage over the past 10 years.

Ron Dennis, the McLaren chairman, said of Montoya and Raikkonen: "I think we're for, hopefully, a successful season because they're both great drivers but, more importantly, I think they're going to be great team-mates."