Juan Pablo Montoya: The weather could be a “massive twist” for the Miami Grand Prix

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Ahead of the inaugural Miami Grand Prix, VegasInsider sat down with F1 great Juan Pablo Montoya who gave his forecast for the race as well who he’d pick to win. Here’s what the former Williams and McLaren driver had to say:

 

  • The weather could be a massive twist for the Miami Grand Prix

“I would assume that the Miami track is going to be really smooth, being a new track. It will be interesting to see what pavement they are using.” 

“One of the things that could be a struggle is the weather. You don’t get a lot of rain, but you get really heavy showers for five minutes. It’s not just a light drizzle, it’s ‘full wet floor and full humidity‘. In a lot of places, you can see the front coming. Not here. It’s just ‘Pop, gets everything wet and goes away‘.” 

“The weather could be a massive twist for the race. Might miss the track. Might get part of the track wet. That’s going to be quite interesting. They will have spotters and radars and everything to let the teams know where the rain is coming from, but it’s very hard to predict.” 

  • The biggest winner from a wet track would be Max – on a dry track, I’d pick Ferrari

“I think the biggest winner from a wet track would be Max (Verstappen). Max would have a big advantage. He seems to be very strong and comfortable in the wet.” 

“If it’s dry, I would probably put my money on Ferrari.”

  • If the Max Verstappen from Imola shows up, Ferrari and LeClerc will struggle to beat him

“It will be interesting to see what Charles (LeClerc) does after the mistake last week if he keeps committing and everything works great or if he goes down a notch on performance just to be cautious and not make a mistake. If you do that, then you’ll put yourself in a bad situation, because you take performance away.“

“I find it quite intriguing right now, because if you look at Max, he looked really comfortable the first couple of races, then he wasn’t really there.”

“If you look at the Grand Prix in Saudi Arabia, for ‘Checo’ (Sergio Pérez) to beat him, and no disrespect to him, it’s surprising. I don’t think anybody expected it. Especially with what we have seen before.”

“But if you look at the Max Verstappen that showed up halfway through the sprint race in Imola and on Sunday, that guy, with that car, they are going to struggle to beat.”

  • If I was a betting person, I’d put my money on Max

“If I was a betting person, I would probably put my money on Max.” 

“I think Charles (LeClerc), with the crash, unless the team went to him and said ‘just keep pushing, don’t worry about it’; If they said that to him, he could still win the race.” 

“But my money would be on Max this week. Especially with the Miami weather.”

 

Montoya was speaking to VegasInsider, and you can find the entire interview here.

 

Adam Sinclair
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