Montoya Promises to Give Raikkonen a Hard Time

Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya has warned Finland's Kimi Raikkonen that he will remain a fierce rival this season even though the pair are now McLaren teammates.

The two have been cast as Formula One's fire and ice, character opposites thrust together in what could prove as explosive a pairing as that of champions Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost in 1988 and 1989.

Former Williams driver Montoya certainly intends to give no quarter on Sunday afternoons, even if he and the Finnish 'Ice Man' have shown signs of getting on well together socially.

"The racing on the track (between us this year) is going to be as hard as anybody's," he said on Tuesday after a news conference to announce him as a 'global ambassador' for watchmaker Tag Heuer along with Hollywood stars Brad Pitt and Uma Thurman.

"If I had hard races with Kimi when I was in the Williams and he was in the McLaren, you're going to be seeing the same thing but we are both in the McLarens. I'm going to be trying my best to try to beat him and he's going to be trying his best to try to beat me.

"But at the same time we need to work together to make sure we beat everybody else," said the winner of last year's season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix for Williams.

Jerez Test

The two test together for the first time in Jerez in southern Spain on Thursday and Montoya said he expected Raikkonen to set the pace initially. Although the Colombian has won more races, four with Williams to Raikkonen's two with McLaren, the Finn is starting his fourth season at the Mercedes-powered team.

"I'm not really expecting to go straight into the first year of races and say I'll be quicker than Kimi," said Montoya. "It's very hard to do it like that. For me it's new engineers, new mechanics, new car and new everything. It's going to be a lot harder and if I'm at his pace I'd be very happy to be honest in the first few races.

"It's like when I came into Formula One, everybody was expecting me to be as quick as Ralf (Schumacher) and Ralf started out quicker and Frank (Williams) thought Ralf was the guy. He signed for some stupid money and after that I beat him."

Ralf has moved to Toyota for even more money this year and last weekend tipped McLaren and BAR as the teams likely to provide the biggest challenge to Ferrari's six-year run of domination. Montoya said it was too early to say.

"I don't know how good we are going to be as a car...this business is very hard and I don't know where we are going to stand, especially with the new rules," he said.

"From the technical point of view I don't think we can ask for a lot more from the guys we've got, we've got great guys in the team and Kimi and myself can do great things with the car.

"I think it doesn't matter how quick you are in the first few races as long as you finish," he added. "You need to score the points."

Last year McLaren had their worst start to a season in decades and finished fifth overall after clawing their way back into contention. Raikkonen won the Belgian Grand Prix and was second to Montoya in Brazil.