Montoya Targets Fourth Place in the WDC

Williams-BMW driver Juan Pablo Montoya believes he has performed to the best of his abilities this season, but he is still attempting to snatch fourth-place in the World Drivers' Championship from Renault's Fernando Alonso.

Montoya, with three Grand Prix victories to his name, has been forced to play a bit-part role this season with only two podium finishes as Williams have endured a disappointing season.

The Colombian, speaking ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix, is joint-fifth in the WDC standings with Jarno Trulli but has set himself the target of leapfrogging the Italian and Renault's Alonso to take fourth.

"I want to finish ahead of McLaren in a way, and also to try to beat Alonso," said Montoya, who will switch from Williams to McLaren next season. "But that is quite hard because before we were scoring eight, ten, six points easily, now we are scoring three or four points. There are two races to go and there are six (four) points between us. Unless he had a major problem or we had a brilliant race it would be pretty hard."

Montoya was in the frame for the Championship title last season as he produced his best in 2003, but he has refused to criticise himself for being off the pace of the Ferraris of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello this year.

"There was a lot of optimism (at the start of the year)," he said. "If you look at how the previous year finished and how the car looked at the beginning of the year and testing and everything you would have imagined this would have been the year.

"The first few races I was quite competitive, clearly ahead of the rest of the midfield runners and it wasn't far off Ferrari, but it took six months to get any development in the car. I think once it came we did the best we could.

"I think performance-wise we couldn't do much more than we did. I am pretty pleased by the way I drove during the season, I had very good races this year when I was really driving the wheels off the car and the car allowed me to do that.

"But it is frustrating because you want to win, you know you can because you have done it before, but you can't.

"It is quite hard because you get in the car and go out and it is a bit difficult to drive and you know if you put in a good qualifying you are going to be P5 or P6. We have done P2 this year a couple of times, but it's frustrating.

"I think that is where it is, P5. If you are the problem, you have to work on yourself, but if your team has won races, you have won races, been close to winning championships, then your drivers are suddenly miles back it really says something."