Montoya: Only Schuey can afford a DNF

Despite the pace shown by the Williams-BMW combination in the last few races, Juan Pablo Montoya still thinks that reliability rather than outright performance will be key to the championship outcome

Jul 17, 2003, 4:03 PM

With six races left on the schedule, including Sunday's British GP at Silverstone, Michael Schumacher leads the championship on 64 points, from Kimi Raikkonen on 56 and then the Williams pair, with Ralf Schumacher on 53 and Juan Montoya on 47.

Montoya said: "Looking at the new points system, if you are talking about winning the championship rather than finishing second or third, there is only Michael who can really afford not to finish a race. If Ralf won every race and Michael finished second, Ralf would win by one point, but I don't think that's very realistic.

Montoya denied that the recent Williams success had led to genuine thoughts of a championship challenge.

"No," he said, "I think Silverstone will be an interesting challenge but bloody hard. We know from the testing that Ferrari should be strong and I'd be surprised if we can dominate like we did at the last race. But, saying that, we should definitely be competitive."