Speaking at a Tag Heuer press conference, having been named as a 'global ambassador' for the watch manufacturer, Juan Pablo Montoya made it clear that even though he is joining a team where Kimi Raikkonen is clearly adored - certainly by team boss Ron Dennis - he is in no mood to cow-tow to his new Finnish teammate.

"The racing on the track is going to be as hard as anybody's," he vowed. "If I had hard races with Kimi when I was in the Williams and he was in the McLaren, you're going to be seeing the same thing when we are both in the McLarens.

"I'm going to be trying my best to try to beat him," he continued, "and he's going to be trying his best to try to beat me.

"But at the same time we need to work together to make sure we beat everybody else," admitted the Colombian.

However, the winner of the final race of the 2004 season is realistic: "I'm not really expecting to go straight into the first year of races and say I'll be quicker than Kimi," he admitted. "It's very hard to do it like that.

"For me it's new engineers, new mechanics, new car and new everything. It's going to be a lot harder and if I'm at his pace I'd be very happy to be honest in the first few races.

"When I came into F1, everybody was expecting me to be as quick as Ralf," he continued, "and Ralf started out quicker and Frank thought Ralf was the guy. He signed for some stupid money and after that I beat him."

Asked how competitive the new car is going to be, especially following the Woking outfit's topsy-turvy 2004 season, Montoya was again pragmatic.

"I don't know how good we are going to be as a car," he admitted. "Tthis business is very hard and I don't know where we are going to stand, especially with the new rules. From the technical point of view I don't think we can ask for a lot more from the guys we've got, we've got great guys in the team and Kimi and myself can do great things with the car.

"I think it doesn't matter how quick you are in the first few races as long as you finish," he added. "You need to score the points."