Montoya predicts team-mate clashes at Austrian GP as Hamilton presses Mercedes duo

Juan Pablo Montoya has predicted that the Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring will produce intra-team collisions, pointing to the Spielberg circuit’s compact layout as the catalyst for friction between team-mates. The warning comes as Lewis Hamilton’s growing momentum with Ferrari tightens the championship picture heading into the weekend.

“We’re going to see team-mate clashes,” Montoya said. “This is a place that the team-mates always run together, and it’s a place where somebody’s happy and somebody’s miserable, and you’re going to see team owners get really excited.”

The former F1 driver explained that the Red Bull Ring’s limited number of corners compresses the margins between drivers to an unusual degree. “Three tenths here is like six tenths somewhere else. So, closing the gap here is really, really difficult,” he added. “There aren’t enough corners to make a difference.”

The backdrop to Montoya’s comments is a championship battle that has tightened considerably since Hamilton’s victory at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix — his first with Ferrari and the first non-Mercedes win of the season. That result leaves the seven-time champion 41 points behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli and nine points clear of Mercedes team-mate George Russell.

Russell, speaking at the drivers’ press conference in Austria, pushed back on the idea that either the intra-team dynamic or outside pressure unsettles him. “Neither makes me nervous,” the Briton said. “It makes me excited, to be honest, because the more people you’re going head-to-head with, that’s competition. That is how it was for all of us when we were go-karting. You would never race against one competitor. There were three, four or five drivers who were all competing for wins. That’s how Formula 1 should be. And that’s what excites us.”

With Hamilton applying pressure from outside the Mercedes garage and Antonelli and Russell separated by points rather than a comfortable gap, the Red Bull Ring’s unforgiving braking zones look set to test team orders and driver discipline across the field.