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From the Pulpit

The 2005 McLaren line-up ignited the imagination of fans and pundits last year. The idea of two rising stars battling in equal ground stirred the imagination of those who still remember the days of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost fighting it out in the same team. But with almost half a season gone, the promise has yet to be fulfilled and the disparity between Kimi Raikkonen's performance and Juan Pablo Montoya's lack of, couldn't be more glaring. Matt Bishop has something to say about JPM

What's up with Juan Pablo Montoya? Why, in a nutshell, does he appear to be under-performing so far this year? What on earth was he up to at Monaco, for example? After all, seen-it-all-before FIA men thought he should have been banned rather than merely penalised after his deliberate go-slow on the usually mega-fast run up the hill to Massanet in that practice session - and at Nurburgring he wasn't much better, either. On a day when all at McLaren were weeping for the 10 invaluable Championship points they thought they'd bagged but saw go up in (tyre) smoke in the most dramatic way just a couple of miles from the flag, JPM had provided only two, courtesy of his lacklustre run to seventh, by way of consolation.

Time was when McLaren joint number-ones (or de facto number-twos) routinely stepped into the breach when their team leaders faltered - the much-maligned David Coulthard being only the most recent in a long line of able super-subs of that nature (John Watson, Gerhard Berger and even Alain Prost come to mind as other examples). And yet, weekend after weekend, Juan Pablo fails to do the business.

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