Seven-time grand prix winner Juan Pablo Montoya has revealed that he once received an offer to join his fierce F1 rivals, Ferrari.

Montoya competed in F1 between 2001 and 2006, driving for McLaren and Williams during the era of Michael Schumacher’s glory years with Ferrari.

The legendary German racer picked up five of his seven drivers’ titles whilst racing with the Maranello-based squad, who operated under the watchful eye of Ross Brawn during the 2000s.

The Brit followed Schumacher to Ferrari from Benetton in the late 1990s and took up an instrumental role as technical director.

He is now best known for being the mastermind behind the dream team, which consisted of he and Schumacher, as well as Jean Todt and Rory Byrne. Together, they achieved six consecutive constructors’ championships and five back-to-back titles between 1999 and 2004.

Few drivers were willing to challenge Schumacher at the wheel of a Ferrari during that time, but Montoya was always credited for his fearless approach to on-track battles him.

But it turns out it was the German who kept Montoya from ever making a move to Ferrari.

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Speaking in a recent episode of the BBC’s F1 Chequered Flag Podcast after the Miami GP, Montoya said: “The crazy thing is when I was in F1, I looked at Ferrari and I never looked at it that way,” referring to the allure that seems to attract so many drivers to the Italian team despite them not winning a title of any kind since 2008.

The Colombian driver-turned-pundit then revealed that Brawn had even gone as far as to extend an offer for him to switch over to Ferrari during his career, but that he had turned it down instantly for one reason.

When asked by 1996 champion Damon Hill why he never felt the pull from Ferrari, Montoya explained: “I don’t know. Ross Brawn once came to me and said, ‘We would love if you ever race for us.’ And I said, ‘No, thank you.’ In hindsight, I go, ‘Oh my god, that was crazy.’

“I remember I came to the Williams meeting, I mean, after the race in Monza, and I told my engineer, [they] said, ‘How was it?’ I said, ‘Well, Ross Brown just said I should go to Ferrari.’ And [they] said, ‘What do you say?’ I said, ‘No, thank you.’ And they all looked at me like, ‘Oh my god, you’re crazy.'”

Montoya was then asked by commentator and co-host Harry Benjamin: “And you don’t regret that?”

To which the former McLaren star replied: “No, I didn’t want to have Michael as a team-mate because I didn’t want to be a second-tier driver.”

Though Montoya’s decline of Brawn’s offer appeared to shock many in F1 at the time, he is far from the only driver to admit that playing second fiddle to Schumacher offered little to no incentive to switch to the Scuderia.

Fellow former McLaren driver David Coulthard has previously spoken of sharing Montoya’s opinion.

Montoya later added that the driver politics in play at Ferrari have made it hard for many stars of the sport to perform within their ranks, suggesting it was time for a change in operations.

“The hard thing, and I think it’s getting a little better, is the amount of politics that are going on,” the 50-year-old said.

“It’s really hard to perform there when there’s so many opinions and so many layers. You know what I mean? I think nowadays big companies have so many layers of opinions and sometimes [to] simplify things makes a big difference.”

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Seven-time F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton has hinted that he will be taking a different approach to his preparations at future race weekends.

Hamilton had a poor Miami Grand Prix weekend, only finishing down in seventh in the sprint race, before qualifying and finishing sixth in the main race on Sunday.

That was despite the fact that Ferrari brought 11 upgrades to the Miami International Autordrome, and were hoping to be challenging for the race win alongside McLaren and Mercedes.

Ferrari had a five-week break to try and build on what had been a positive start to the season, with the team having claimed podiums in each of the first three grands prix of the season.

But they only took 22 points from Miami, their lowest total at a grand prix weekend of the season despite there being more points available at the sprint race weekend.

Now, Hamilton has slammed the simulator that he uses back in Maranello, claiming that the work that he did on that during the five-week break was irrelevant once the car actually got out onto the track on Friday.

“I’m going to have a different approach in the next race because the way we’re preparing at the moment is not helping and so we’ll see how that goes for the next race,” Hamilton told media in Miami. “But we’re going to another track with long straights. We’re losing three to four tenths just on straight line speed. So that’s there, and it’s going to be there until we fix it.”

Talking about his simulator work, Hamilton continued: “Ultimately, it’s always correlation. We go on it and then we get to a track and it’s always different when we get to a track. What I mean by it is that I spend time on the simulator. I don’t like simulators in general, but I sat in the simulator every week in the build-up to this race and working on correlation constantly.

“You go on it, you prepare for the track, you drive it and you get the car set up to a certain place and then you come to the track and that set up doesn’t work.”

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Hamilton searching for first Ferrari grand prix win

There was real hope at Ferrari that their multitude of upgrades would turn them into championship challengers.

But, as a result of other teams’ improvements, Ferrari have actually appeared to have gone backwards, no longer the outright second-fastest team on the grid.

McLaren and Red Bull – mainly Max Verstappen – were providing a real challenge to Ferrari throughout the weekend, while Mercedes remain the outfit to beat.

It means that the illusive first grand prix win in Ferrari red feels further away from Hamilton now than it did at the start of the year, and he will need to be outperforming team-mate Charles Leclerc consistently if he has any chance of getting in the mix for race wins.

Back to the drawing board for Ferrari and, it seems, Hamilton.

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