Juan Pablo Montoya interview: ‘My Max Verstappen feud’ | F1 | Sport

Juan Pablo Montoya insists he has no ill feeling towards and “couldn’t give two f***s” about Max Verstappen despite their recent high-profile spat. The Red Bull racer last month slammed Montoya for “talking so much nonsense” and questioned why the Colombian former Williams and McLaren driver gets work as a pundit.

The conflict stemmed from Montoya’s call for drivers who disrespect the sport to be “parked” and given harsh penalties. He was referring to some drivers, including Verstappen, who had slammed the new generation of cars publicly and likened driving them to playing video games like Mario Kart.

Verstappen later said of Montoya: “I just don’t understand why types like that get paid by the management of Formula 1. Surely you don’t want someone like that in the paddock who spouts so much rubbish?” But, speaking to our Pit Lane Torque podcast, via BetVictor Live Casino, Montoya insists he was making a general point about all F1 drivers and not singling out Verstappen.

“I said that every driver that mocked the sport should get penalised,” he said. And then they said to me, ‘Will you penalise Max?’ I said, ‘Yeah, like I would penalise everybody else’. I’m not saying don’t criticise the sport. If you don’t like it, it’s okay not to like it. But for me, what I really said was, ‘Have an opinion, dislike as much as you want, but you don’t want to mock the sport’.

“Criticising like, ‘They should have done this, they should have done that’. It’s fine. I think it’s about, when you criticise something, it’s better when you’re trying to be constructive, not destructive.”

Asked if he was surprised by Verstappen’s strong public swipe back at him, Montoya said he would have responded in the same way if roles were reversed. He said: “If somebody goes, ‘We don’t like the way you’re doing your interviews and the amount of s**t you write is f*****g terrible’, if I came out and said that, you would say, ‘That f*****g clown is nowhere’, wouldn’t you? You would.

“It’s the nature of the beast. I’m okay with that. I don’t really care. I don’t have anything against Max. I said I think the driver should get penalised. And I think if you go to any other sport and you bad-mouth a league or whatever, you’re in trouble.

“If you go to a soccer match and you say the referees are a joke and they’re probably getting paid by somebody to manipulate the games, how much trouble would you get? ‘I think the referee did a s****y job’, that’s okay, it’s your opinion. But don’t insult the sport by doing so. That’s my opinion.

“If you’re a Max fan, you’re going to say, ‘Well, Max put Montoya in his place with that’. And if you f***ing listen to it, I couldn’t really give two f***s about Max. I love Max, I think he’s an amazing driver.

“If they would ask me the question, ‘Would you penalise Lando [Norris]?’ I would have said yes. ‘Would you penalise George [Russell]?’ Yes. ‘Would you penalise Sergio [Perez]?’ Yes. I don’t sugar-coat things, I tell it how it is. I don’t have anything against anybody on the grid. I really don’t.”