Montoya requires focus to realise undoubted talent

Ralf Schumacher's second grand prix victory here on Sunday did more than just highlight the respective merits of his driving, BMW power, Williams chassis technology and Michelin's tyre performance. The young German's success also underlined the mountain that his much-touted team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya has to climb before he can do the same thing.

When Montoya replaced Jenson Button at BMW Williams for 2001, many expected that he would be able to bring to Formula 1 the blend of scintillating car control, aggressive and never-say-die bravado that had made him a champion in America's ChampCar series. Those who had watched him there, such as the erudite journalistic doyen Gordon Kirby, who expressed the remarkable opinion that the Colombian was "the greatest race driver I have ever seen", believed he would have Michael Schumacher served to him as a pre-race appetiser.

Such things have been heard before: Mario Andretti's son Michael, and the last ChampCar driver to run for Williams, Alex Zanardi, had both carved out fabulous careers in America's premier single-seater category with wonderful performances that, rightly, left spectators gasping. But neither cut the mustard in F1.

In Brazil Montoya showed all the potential to get inside Schumacher's head with an audacious passing move going into the first corner. He should have won that race, but for being punted out of the lead by the Dutch driver Jos Verstappen, whom he had just lapped. To this day Verstappen's Arrows team insists that its telemetry shows the incident was more a case of Montoya braking earlier rather than Verstappen misjudging his own braking and taking him off the track.

More recently, Montoya led again in Austria until coming under serious pressure from Schumacher as his tyres lost their edge. The two ended up outbraking each other into a gravel trap as Schumacher tried a hopeless move round the outside of a hairpin bend where there is no outside. But in his last two outings for a team whose directors, Sir Frank Williams and Patrick Head, have never cared much to see their creations smacked into immovable objects, Montoya has overdriven and crashed. It happened in Monte Carlo, and again on Sunday. Montoya's supporters ­ and there are many in the paddock who admire his style and character ­ have found themselves wondering how much longer it will take him to settle down. Others wonder if he ever will, or whether he is on borrowed time at Williams.

So far the only ChampCar driver in recent history to do what Mario Andretti did in the 1960s and 70s is Jacques Villeneuve. And while his achievement in winning the 1997 World Championship might have been expected to facilitate a bit of bonding between the French-Canadian and the Colombian, the reverse has been the case. More than once this season they have clashed on the track, like dogs urinating proprietorially on territory they wish to mark only to discover that the other believes it to be his.

Things came to head with an alleged scuffle in the driver's briefing in Canada, where one threatened to put the other into the wall to teach him a lesson, and the other then offered to return the favour albeit substituting a tree for the wall. Such tit-for-tat verbal sparring is to expected at times, but Montoya's alleged remark that Villeneuve had already killed somebody ­ the volunteer marshal Graham Beveridge during an accident in Melbourne earlier this year ­ nearly provoked fisticuffs.

Charlie Whiting, of the governing body, the FIA, threatened each with a two-race holiday if they continue their feud on track.

Montoya should have his mind on other things. Anyone who has seen him handle a F1 car has no doubt that he has all the skill he needs in terms of physical talent and mental acuity ­ but, as Ayrton Senna demonstrated, driving is only part of the game. How you marshal your thoughts and energy outside a car is just as important a part of winning races, let alone championships. Perhaps someone needs to take Montoya aside and tell him that all the talent in the world is not enough if that other focus is not there to channel it in a fruitful direction.