When it comes to sports, Colombians are quite patriotic (except for football, of course… the current "trend" is golf (!) because of Camilo Villegas). In 1999, only a bunch of "rich, snob people" followed the main categories of car racing (F1, Cart, Nascar), until Juan Pablo Montoya joined the Chip Ganassi Racing team and, as a rookie, won his first CART championship. Everyone switched from soccer or cycling to the emotions of car racing. After winning the Indy 500 in 2000 with his aggressive and controversial style of driving, he went to F1 in 2001. Chao, CART, hola Fórmula Uno. Before Montoya, though, Colombia had another two F1 pilots: Ricardo Londoño, who tried to qualify to a GP in 1981, and Roberto José Guerrero, who after two seasons moved to race in the US, with initial but fugacious success.

Thanks to Montoya, Colombians learned quite fast such terms as pit(s) or pole position, how was the qualifying system and another stuff previously "reserved" for those who liked car racing because they could afford a competition vehicle. We enjoyed his 7 wins out of 95 races, his confrontations with such pilots as Michael Schumacher (the best in all F1 history and who is praised and/or hated in Colombia) and all the Sunday morning ritual every two weeks watching the top on car racing.

But NASCAR is not the same. We don’t even know if national TV networks will broadcast it, and it seems his sophisticated wife won’t change their beautiful house in Monaco for some trailer in the US so easily. Maybe "he’s not worried about switching from locales like Monaco to less exotic locations like Talladega. He even joyfully talked about eating a hot dog in Chicago", but what about Connie? SPEED channel got the rights for cable television in Latin America, so Colombian cable operators will include it in their programming grids, I guess.

And what about us? Maybe Montoya was not doing well, but F1 has improved lately in emotion, specially with the recent Alonso-Schumacher confrontation. Shanghai GP was awesome, Suzuka too and I’ll be there watching Interlagos, the last of the season and Schumacher’s farewell, on 22 September. And, come on, the F1 is the top of the tops of autoracing, don’t try to fool us, don’t even try to compare it with the "redneckie" series.

As long as Fox Sports Latin America carries the rights, I’ll try to watch F1 once in a while. I’ll cheer up for Alonso, until another great pilot from a Spanish-speaking country shows up. Best wishes for Montoya in NASCAR. Even if I don’t want to, I’ll know what will happen with him. But it’s not the same.

Related posts:

• Montoya leaves F1 (11 July 2006)