Montoya Calls for Ferrari Leadership Action After Monza Meltdown
Ferrari left Monza with more questions than points, and Juan Pablo Montoya believes the answers can only come from the very top of the organisation.
On a day when Mercedes celebrated a crushing 1-2 and Kimi Antonelli stormed from 19th on the grid to victory, Ferrari’s home race disintegrated within two laps. The tifosi came expecting a statement; they got a civil war.
Opening-lap flashpoint
The tension ignited almost immediately. Into Turn 1, Lewis Hamilton threw his Ferrari down the inside of Charles Leclerc, then tried to hang on around the outside of Turn 2. Leclerc held his line. Hamilton ran out of road, skated through the gravel and tumbled to 10th.
It was aggressive. It was uncompromising. And it was between team-mates in front of Ferrari’s own grandstands.
Hamilton recovered, but the damage to Ferrari’s afternoon – and to the mood on the pit wall – was already obvious. The seven-time world champion would later describe the outcome as “a tough one to swallow” in his interview with F1 TV, a neat summary of a race that promised so much and delivered almost nothing.
Leclerc’s costly error
Any hope of a reset vanished on lap two. Leclerc, now locked in a fight with McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, pushed hard through Parabolica. Too hard.
He ran wide onto the kerb on exit, lost control and slammed into the barriers. The crowd groaned, the yellow flags flew, and Ferrari’s lead car was buried in the tyre wall. Hamilton, delayed and out of position after the first-lap clash, could do no more than salvage sixth by the flag.
On a day Mercedes were ruthless, Ferrari were reckless.
“Go above Fred”
Watching on as a pundit for F1 TV, Montoya did not sugar-coat what he felt needed to happen before the Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid.
“They need to go to not only Fred but above Fred and sit them down,” he said, calling for intervention beyond team principal Fred Vasseur. “Both of them need to go to Maranello this week, and they need to sit down and have a proper talk because, in my opinion, Charles came out and said, ‘I raced Lewis like I would have raced anybody else.’
“But it's your team-mate, and you've got to respect your team-mate, and you've got to respect the team.”
In Montoya’s view, this is no longer just a matter for the garage or the pit wall. It is a question of corporate will at Maranello: how much freedom do two star drivers really have when the constructors’ fight and the team’s image are on the line?
Title picture darkens
The standings underline the cost of Monza’s implosion.
Hamilton, third in the championship, now sits 10 points behind second-placed George Russell and a hefty 76 adrift of leader Antonelli. Leclerc is fifth on 155 points, a full 112 behind the Italian who dominated Ferrari’s home race in silver.
A home grand prix that should have been a launchpad has turned into a warning sign. The speed is there. The results are not. And now, as Montoya insists, the decision lies with Ferrari’s hierarchy: let the drivers keep sorting it out on track, or finally draw the line in Maranello this week.
