Juan Pablo Montoya is testing with Porsche today in the 919 Hybrid but after two tests, a simulator session and a week here in Bahrain with the team there is no race deal in sight.
In a light -hearted catch up with the assembled media the Colombian ex F1 and current Penske Indycar star confirmed that Porsche had made the initial contact and that he currently had no plans to take the relationship further, his Indycar commitments will keep him busy, in particular, critically in the month of May when preparation for the Indy 500 inevitably clashes with the Spa precursor to Le Mans.
“We haven’t even talked about Le Mans,” said Montoya. “It would be a cool race to do but we haven’t even spoken about it yet.
“I’m really happy in Indycars right now but at some point if that changed in the future this is something you could look at.”
Below with fellow Porsche test driver here Mitch Evans
There is no current testing planned for Montoya.
“Revealing that Roger Penske had told him to “just have fun” Juan Pablo referred to the speculation that he might like to complete his Monaco GP and Indy 500 winning set with a Le Mans winners trophy.
“It would be cool, I’ve raced everything and to get to win would be cool. This year I thought I was going to get the opportunity to do the Bathurst 1000, there was a chance and that would have been cool too. From what I hear though the cars are really weird to drive, really different, but I’d like the challenge.”
Referencing his successes at the Rolex 24 at Daytona the Colombian added that “I like endurance but it really is just another car.
“If you think about the technology and how far advanced it is this is ahead of Formula One right now
“Technically it’s really hard but the simulator really helps you to prepare and being here for a full week really helps too to see and hear how they work with the systems and deal with issues.
And on how the WEC and Porsche’s LMP1 set-up stacked up to his previous racing exploits:
“WEC is pretty good, the races are long and you really need to understand who is racing in every class to understand the race but for me, with access to the radio and to be inside what was going on it was a lot of fun.
“Porsche is a big team, very much like a Formula One team but it’s so international, so professional but so relaxed, it’s a really nice mixture.”
