Montoya expecting hard start

Juan Pablo Montoya is not expecting to beat McLaren teammate Kimi Raikkonen straight away this season and knows he has a hard task ahead of him. No doubt the pair will have some good on-track battles in 2005 but initially Montoya is focusing on getting used to his new team and would be happy to just match Raikkonen's pace.

Juan Pablo Montoya.

Photo by BMW PressClub.

"I'm not really expecting to go straight into the first year of races and say I'll be quicker than Kimi. It's very hard to do it like that," the Colombian said at a TAG Heuer event in London.

"For me it's new engineers, new mechanics, new car and new everything. It's going to be a lot harder and if I'm at his pace in the first few races I'd be very happy to be honest."

Once Montoya is settled in, he knows that the competition between himself and Raikkonen will be tough. "The racing on the track is going to be hard," he commented. "I had hard races with Kimi when I was in the Williams and he was in the McLaren."

"So you're going to be seeing the same thing when we're both in McLarens. I will be trying my best to beat him and he'll be trying his best to beat me. But at the same time we need to work together to make sure we beat everybody else."

McLaren's poor performances early last season were well documented and Montoya is not willing to predict how the team will fare this year, especially with the new rules that will come in. "I don't know how good we are going to be with the car," he said.

"From the technical point of view I don't think we can ask for a lot more from the guys we've got. We've got great guys in the team and Kimi and myself can do great things with the car. I think it doesn't matter how quick you are in the first few races as long as you finish. You need to score the points."