Montoya Calls for Ferrari Leadership After Monza Meltdown

Ferrari left Monza with more questions than points, and Juan Pablo Montoya believes the answers now have to come from the very top of the organisation.

On a day when Mercedes celebrated a crushing 1-2 and Kimi Antonelli produced a storming drive from 19th on the grid to victory, Ferrari’s home race disintegrated within two laps. The tifosi came for a red coronation; they got a public unraveling instead.

The flashpoint arrived almost immediately. Into Turn 1 on the opening lap, Lewis Hamilton hurled his Ferrari down the inside of Charles Leclerc, then tried to hang on around the outside of Turn 2. Leclerc held his line. Hamilton ran out of road, bounced through the gravel and tumbled down the order to 10th.

Any hope of stabilising the situation vanished a lap later. Under pressure from McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, Leclerc ran wide onto the kerb on the exit of Parabolica. The Ferrari snapped away from him and slammed into the barriers. The grandstands fell silent. Hamilton salvaged sixth at the flag, but the damage to Ferrari’s Sunday – and to its internal dynamic – was already done.

Hamilton, third in the championship coming into the weekend, called the outcome “a tough one to swallow” when he spoke to F1 TV. The phrase felt like an understatement in front of a home crowd that had watched a potential podium turn into a self-inflicted wound.

Montoya, analysing Ferrari’s race on the same broadcast, did not spare the Scuderia. For him, this is no longer just about two hard racers refusing to yield. It is about leadership.

“They need to go to not only Fred but above Fred and sit them down,” Montoya said, pointing directly at the need for intervention beyond team principal Fred Vasseur. “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.’

“But it's your team-mate, and you've got to respect your team-mate, and you've got to respect the team.”

That, in Montoya’s eyes, is the crux. Leclerc insisted he treated Hamilton like any other rival. Montoya’s argument is that Ferrari cannot afford “any other rival” standards between its own drivers when a championship is on the line and the car is finally competitive.

The numbers on the table sharpen the point. Hamilton’s sixth place leaves him 10 points behind second-placed George Russell in the drivers’ standings and 76 adrift of championship leader Antonelli. Leclerc, fifth in the table on 155 points, sits 112 points behind the Italian.

A title bid demands unity. Ferrari left Monza with a fractured afternoon and a spotlight on its internal politics instead.

Next stop is Madrid and the Spanish Grand Prix. The question now is not just how fast the Ferrari will be on a new street layout, but whether Maranello’s hierarchy is ready to draw the lines its drivers clearly won’t draw for themselves.