Juan Pablo Montoya Interview: Why Verstappen Won't Leave Red Bull

Oscar Piastri had the priority strategy, and he looked pretty solid until the blue flags with Carlos Sainz. I was shocked with the blue flag incident. Sainz said the system wasn't working properly, but I mean he has mirrors! You had people on the radio telling him that Piastri was right behind him. But Lando Norris would have won the race anyway. He was dominant in the second half of the race. Norris was running quicker than Oscar on the old tyres.

No, I don't think Oscar is the number two. I am sure McLaren really wants to make sure Oscar runs well. I don’t think there’s a bias. Lando is just more comfortable and mentally in a much better place. Being world champion gives you confidence. He is confident because he knows in his mind he can beat Oscar now and when you know you can beat your teammate, you don't even think about it, you just beat him!

Oscar now needs to figure out why Lando is able to do that and ask himself what he needs to change and what changes from the car he needs. If I was Oscar, I would go to McLaren and tell them he needs to sacrifice two or three weekends and just go completely left field and try things that he hasn’t tried before and figure things out. Remember last year when teams stopped bringing upgrades, some actually started running a lot better. When they stopped trying to reinvent the wheel things improved. They asked themselves how they could make the car quicker for F1 racing with what they had. Oscar and his engineers really need to focus on that.

Mercedes have not yet brought big upgrades whereas everybody else has and they’re still pretty close in pace. If you look at it from that point of view, other teams should be worried! If you're Mercedes, the longer you can run as things are, the more money you save and the more money you can bring towards next year's car.

The question is, “Do Mercedes need to put themselves in an uncomfortable situation?” In Zandvoort you’re going to see a really, really fast McLaren, a pretty competitive Red Bull, especially with Max at his home Grand Prix wanting to prove a point. We’ll see a really good Ferrari, so it’s all getting very close, almost too close for Mercedes’ liking!

So, the only way Mercedes comes out ahead is if they introduce their big upgrades. Everybody has shown their hand from now to the end of the season. So, when Mercedes brings that next package, I think they will be further ahead of everybody. The cards and the aces are with Mercedes.

Zandvoort would be a good place but in the overall picture they then go to Monza, and you don't need it. They need to figure out whether you need it for Madrid. Every race you delay, you're putting yourself in a bad situation and you're putting your drivers in a bad situation and you're compromising the championship for no reason. So, the quicker they bring it, the better.

Before Monza wouldn’t make sense because they're taking the engine penalty there and it makes no sense. Madrid would make sense because you go to Madrid, then Baku, you go to the new Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia. In those races you really need down force. Then before you know it you are rolling towards the last few races.

My guess is Madrid is where we’ll see Mercedes change things. They will want to see how they perform in Zandvoort which won’t be an easy race for them. They’ll be looking at how McLaren perform and remember McLaren has the new engine. They took the penalty in Spa. That was a huge step.

I don’t think you are going to see anything big from McLaren before the end of the season unless of course they take forty, fifty points away from Kimi Antonelli at Zandvoort and look they will have a shot at the championship; then they'll keep throwing money at this.

Mercedes have been unreliable at times but they keep fixing it and keep bringing new things and it's getting better. I don’t think Mercedes are going to keep breaking down. What might happen is more to do with penalties with gearboxes and batteries and engines and things later in the season.

The hard thing for Oscar is that everybody would love to have Max in the team. From what I hear, Red Bull are pushing to close Max's contract, pay him more but with no option to leave. They have asked him what he is looking for to rewrite his contract and stop dicking around. So, is Max negotiating by talking to more teams to try to get more money? Or does Max really want to leave?

It's always a money thing! But the big thing for me is the status Max has in Red Bull. He is the King. Does he really want to get into a fight at Mercedes with Kimi, who is Toto’s boy, to be King of that jungle? Does he really want to get into a fight at McLaren where Lando is the world champion and where Lando is Zak’s golf buddy? So, is Max happy enough to go somewhere where everything is not going to revolve around him? No.

So, where are you going to go? If you're Toto, are you going to sacrifice Antonelli to make Max happy? No. That's the reality. I don't see it. Would he be happy to have both of them in the team? He would love to have both of them. Could he manage both of them? Yes.

The question is if you are Max, would you be happy not to be undisputed number one. Remember with the ground effects when Max wasn't happy with the car, and how good Checo Perez was against him. People were talking about Checo possibly being a world champion. Then the changes came, the upgrades came, everything to make sure Max was happy! The happier Max got, the worse Checo got!

To be honest, I don't think there's an opening in Mercedes for the next few years. McLaren would like to have Max for sure, but would Max be happy to accept a situation where he was not number one? So, I don’t think he’d go there.

The only way he might consider them is if McLaren started dominating the next few races, which would make Max think that they're going to be the team to beat over the next few years, and he’ll think, “OK, I’ll go head to head with Lando and I know I can beat him and deal with it.” If that's not the case, why would he leave?

Yes. That is not a bad thing either. Look at what Red Bull did with the engine. They have the best engine on the grid. Maybe they’re not winning the races but it's not like they're running far off. They are right there. If they find a couple of tenths, they’ll be really good. The car is not quite where it needs to be. But with everybody that has left that team, they're still performing unbelievably well. This was the first non-Newey car and it was good, and they have improved it and they're going in the right direction. So, Max might well realise that the grass is not always greener on the other side.

It's not good for either party to have uncertainty. From what I hear, before Austria Red Bull and Max had a meeting and they told him they wanted this sorted out and to have all the clauses which allow him to leave, to be taken out of the contract. They offered him another €30 million on top of his €50 million a year deal. Max came back and said, “We actually want double!’”

Why was it reckless? He went to pass Lewis and when he went to brake, he realised Lewis had braked early, so he went for it. It wasn’t reckless. He didn't even run wide. Lewis ultimately was massively taken by surprise by Max. That is why Max is Max. Whether you like it or not, the way that guy can drive a car is pretty freaking amazing.

Michael Schumacher won five of his seven championships since 2000. Lewis has won all seven in that time. Look at what Vettel did, he was incredible. So, is Max one of the greatest? For sure. But he is not the only great driver.

I feel really bad for Williams. They're really trying to put everything in place and James Vowles is doing a really good job and he's working really hard to make sure things are turned around. He learned a lot from Toto in his ten years at Mercedes and he's trying to apply it. But sometimes things are easier said than done.

It will be really interesting to see how good that new chassis will be for Baku. That is going to determine the next few years for Williams. That is how big a deal that is going to be. After last year, everyone expected them to be good this season, but they missed the boat. And the problem is when you miss the boat with new regulations to deal with, you're just playing catch-up for the next five years.

It's cool. The track is probably my favourite ever. It is fricking unbelievable. It's going to produce really good racing. It has got really long straights, it's got a lot of passing places. It is a great racetrack. It is going to be very exciting. It is going to be physical for the guys because it's going to be the same heat as Singapore but you're going to be racing during the day. That is going to be hard.

Huge. They went from stone last to being competitive. That is a sign of Newey’s influence beginning to bear fruit. This is the first true Newey car. When Adrian arrived there a lot of things were already decided. They were not what he wanted. So, he worked around what was already in place. Now there are more things coming down the pipeline. You have the new engine coming for the next race at Zandvoort. That’s going to be another step forward.

It wouldn't surprise me by the time Madrid comes around or Malaysia that we will see them scoring points. I think the engine's still going to be down, but I would think they're probably going to close that gap to about half of what it was in terms of power. They are still going to be about a second off, but I mean they were three or four seconds off. It puts into perspective what Newey is doing, when you see what Williams are struggling with, what Alpine's struggling with, what Haas is struggling with. This guy comes in and his first car is already better than most.

Mercedes wasn't a surprise, but I think Kimi has been. George Russell’s struggles have been a little shocking. It looked like he was going to be dominant. Mentally getting over that you're not dominating and that your A game to be world champion isn’t good enough. To get over that mountain is not easy. Lewis’s resurgence has been so good to see. I am very happy for him.

I talked to McLaren in Australia and I told them I thought they would struggle initially but I said, “I bet you halfway through the season you guys are going to be winning races.” The way McLaren develops their cars is better than anybody in the paddock. So, it will be interesting to see how the progression continues.

Cadillac at the beginning of the year really surprised me with how well they did and how the upgrades were working, how everything they were doing was working. And then they started having a lot of issues with the front brakes and they're really struggling with that now. That's a big part of their problems right now.

Everybody, including me, was expecting so much out of Williams this year. They stopped developing the car in 2025 to focus on 2026, and then they ended up like this. It’s not only the weight issue. The car seems to be really hard to drive. They have got a lot of work to do.

The first time we're going to see something different is Madrid. Everybody's on break right now. Everybody's off, nobody's working right now. There is not a lot of stuff going on. If I was Williams, I would try to figure out a way to bring a car for Carlos for Madrid. Having signed him, they need to show Carlos that they’re willing to go the extra mile for him.

If they can keep Kimi from being young and aggressive and don't get caught up in the moment of racing people, I think he is going to be world champion. If people are racing him and he has chances of passing, he might end up crashing and doing things trying to show people that he’s the guy.

It has been good. They’re trying to do a better job with strategies, they're really going out there to get things done. It's different for them, but it's really cool to see.

I think Aston are going to make a step forward but I think their really big step is going to be next year. I think Honda now has time to make another huge step for 2027. Honda and Aston are going to be a good story. I would really like to see Williams improve to where they could be at the level of the Audis or the Racing Bulls.

I think Lando is going to win again, followed by Max Verstappen and then Kimi Antonelli.