Montoya: no unfinished business in F1

The Colombian driver left Formula One during the 2006 season and returned to the Ganassi team, with whom he had raced in Champ Cars, to compete in the US series for stock cars.

In F1, Montoya scored seven wins and 30 podiums, but he never achieved the goal of winning a title.

Despite that, Montoya reckons he had nothing left to prove.

"If I look at my career in F1 I absolutely don't have the impression I left a job undone," Montoya told Autosprint magazine. "My primary objective was always winning the world championship.

"When I realized that even if I stayed in F1 for three or four more seasons this objective could not be reached, there was no point staying on.

"I think I had the talent to become world champion, but the prospects I had for the future, as far as team and car were concerned, would realistically never have brought me this result.

"The years I had left to race at the top level in F1 were not enough for such an objective. With these prospects it made no sense to carry on in that series, I had to be realistic."

Montoya left the McLaren team in the middle of last season after a difficult first part of the year. He admits by then he was not having fun anymore.

"To perform at 100% I need to enjoy myself, I need to feel at ease, I need to be surrounded by people who believe in what I do. In the last months at McLaren I honestly didn't enjoy myself much, there weren't many reasons to be happy," he added.

Montoya, who recently won the Daytona 24 Hours race, reiterated it's the current state of F1, with limited overtaking and just a handful of teams fighting for victory, that made him realise he needed a change.

"In the last NASCAR race I took part in I did 70 overtaking manoeuvres," Montoya added. "I've never done that many in a full F1 season with McLaren. In the last months I received an offer from Toro Rosso, and before signing with Ganassi there were talks with Red Bull, Williams and Toyota.

"All of those teams are competitive, I'm sure they will have performing cars this season. The problem wasn't them, but it was rather what I wanted to do with my life. Now I'm very happy with the decision I've made.

The Colombian added: "An F1 car is an exceptional thing, it's fantastic to drive it, for a driver it's the most complete and best thing to take to the limit of all the series in the world. But one thing is the cars, another is the races, and at the moment the spectacle offered by the GPs isn't that good or enjoyable.

"And to think that now in America there are people saying that NASCAR races aren't competitive or spectacular enough, even though you happen to overtake 70 times in a single race! So what should they say about the spectacle from a GP today?

"What I found frustrating in F1 was that if you didn't have a winning car, it didn't matter how well you could drive, you would never win anyway. You can be Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher or Alain Prost or whoever: if you don't drive a winning car, you're out of the game anyway.

"In NASCAR there are 36 races per year, at least 50 cars that during the course of the season will have their opportunity, their chance to win. The space between being first or 30th is very limited, you just need a wrong setting and you end up at the back.

"By contrast in F1, if a driver has a car worthy of fifth place and does the race of his life, he'll end up fourth, while if he doesn't perform at his best, he'll end up sixth. The differences in the results are minimal, because it's all tied to the efficiency of the car."