Montoya Urges Ferrari Leadership After Monza Meltdown
Ferrari left Monza with more questions than answers, and Juan Pablo Montoya believes the response now has to come from the very top of the organisation.
On a day when Mercedes celebrated a dominant 1-2 and Kimi Antonelli stormed from 19th on the grid to victory, Ferrari’s home race disintegrated within two laps. The tifosi came for a red revival. They got a civil war.
It started at Turn 1.
Lewis Hamilton threw his Ferrari down the inside of Charles Leclerc into the opening chicane, then tried to hang on around the outside of Turn 2. Leclerc held his line. Hamilton ran out of road, skated through the gravel, and tumbled to 10th place before he’d even settled into the race.
The damage was more psychological than physical. Two Ferraris, one corner, and a message that neither driver intended to yield.
The tension spiked almost immediately. On lap two, with Leclerc now locked in a fight with McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, the Monegasque ran wide onto the kerb on the exit of Parabolica. The car snapped. He lost control and slammed into the barriers, ending his race and silencing a packed Monza grandstand in an instant.
Hamilton recovered to sixth, but it felt like a hollow result on a day when Mercedes were untouchable at the front and Antonelli stretched his championship lead again.
Speaking to F1 TV after the race, Hamilton, currently third in the drivers’ standings, called the outcome “a tough one to swallow”. Tough, because the opportunity was there. Tougher, because the wounds were self‑inflicted.
Watching on, Montoya didn’t sugar-coat what he saw from Ferrari’s point of view. For him, this is no longer just a matter for team principal Fred Vasseur.
“They need to go to not only Fred but above Fred and sit them down. Both of them need to go to Maranello this week, and they need to sit down and have a proper talk because, in my opinion, Charles came out and said, ‘I raced Lewis like I would have raced anybody else,’” Montoya said on the broadcast.
Then came the sting.
“But it's your team-mate, and you've got to respect your team-mate, and you've got to respect the team."
That is the crux of Ferrari’s problem. Leclerc insists he treated Hamilton as he would any rival. Montoya argues that is precisely the issue. In a title fight, with a dominant Mercedes pairing and Antonelli setting the pace, Ferrari cannot afford its drivers to race each other as if they’re in different colours.
The numbers underline the cost.
Hamilton now sits 10 points behind second-placed George Russell in the standings and 76 adrift of championship leader Antonelli. Leclerc is fifth on 155 points, already 112 behind the Italian. At Monza, with a home crowd roaring them on, Ferrari had the platform to close that gap. Instead, they deepened the hole.
This is why Montoya is pushing for intervention “above Fred” – a call for Ferrari’s senior hierarchy in Maranello to impose hard lines on how Hamilton and Leclerc go wheel-to-wheel. Not a gentle chat. A reset.
The calendar offers no breathing space. The next stop is the Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid, and Ferrari will arrive not just chasing Mercedes and Antonelli, but trying to prove they can race each other without tearing their season apart.
