Montoya Dashed de la Rosa's Hopes
One look from Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya on Saturday morning dashed Pedro de la Rosa's slim hopes of racing for McLaren in his home Spanish Formula One Grand Prix
Montoya, returning after a two-race absence with a shoulder injury, crashed heavily in practice on Friday and De la Rosa admitted that he arrived at the Circuit de Catalunya the next morning with a faint hope that he might be summoned as a replacement.
"Of course I would like to be racing," said the Spaniard, who replaced Montoya in Bahrain and finished fifth.
"I have been waiting until the very last moment to see how Juan Pablo was doing.
"I've been asking him every day how he was feeling and until this morning I was prepared, I got here before them today just waiting.
"You never know how he was going to wake up so I looked at his face this morning and he said 'Don't get changed'."
De la Rosa could still take pride in setting the fastest laps in both the previous day's practice sessions as the third driver allowed to run on Fridays only.
Be part of the Autosport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Top Comments
Friday's favourite: The V10 beast that still holds the Bahrain track record
Pedro de la Rosa thinks test reduction is bad for Formula 1
Why de la Rosa has faith in HRT
O'Sullivan loses ART F2 seat due to funding issues
The five reasons Aston Martin won the battle for Adrian Newey
Leader Newey a bargain for Aston Martin, claims Stroll
How Newey will link Alonso, Honda, and Aston Martin's engineers together for a 2026 title tilt
How Newey will link Alonso, Honda, and Aston Martin's engineers together for a 2026 title tilt
Ayrton Senna's magic moments, chosen by his race engineers
Why the turbine Lotus experiment failed to realise its potential in F1
How the chief architect of McLaren's improvement plans to continue its rise
Subscribe and access Autosport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
