Juan's '04 Brazilian Win!

Posted on Wednesday 07 Oct 2009 and tagged with brazil.

With the Brazilian Grand Prix just around the corner, we look back on our 2004 victory at Sao Paulo with Tony Ross who engineered Juan Pablo Montoya to the win... 

Brazil 2004 was Juan Pablo Montoya’s last race for AT&T Williams and it was quite an exciting grand prix to end on. I was his race engineer and at the start of the weekend we weren’t that competitive, so we did a lot of work with the wing level to bring ourselves into contention and, in the end, Juan qualified second.

There was rain before the start, which resulted in a mixture of tyre choices up and down the grid. Most of the leading cars were on intermediates, but some of the cars at the back started on dry tyres. We adjusted the pressures on Juan’s ‘inters’ for drying conditions, which meant they were quite low initially and he lost a couple of places on the opening lap due to a lack of grip. He stopped for dry tyres after just six laps and at the point when he changed, he was very competitive and regained some of the places that he’d lost at the start.

The defining moment of the race was at this first pitstop because Juan and Kimi Raikkonen pitted at the same time. They exited the pits side-by-side and they were still side-by-side along the back straight into Turn 4. Juan emerged from the corner in the lead and that was enough for him to go on and win the race.

He’d joked before the start that he’d jump out of the car after the race and disappear without saying goodbye. Then he won, so he had no option other than to stand on the podium and say goodbye to us all! It was the end of a very interesting and exciting time for the team because the car had been competitive and Juan was a very good driver.