Juan Pablo Montoya has remarkably revealed that an upcoming docuseries into his life will show his home bereft of any memento of his sensational motorsports career.
Montoya is a two-time Indy 500 champion, as well as winning CART and IMSA titles, whilst he also won seven grands prix across his six seasons in F1 with Williams and McLaren.
The 48-year-old Colombian also collected numerous victories in other series along the way during a career that began in 1995 and spans almost 30 years. He competed in the pro-am class of LMP2 in the European Le Mans Series last year.
Yet the cameras will show nothing of Montoya's past glories. "If you go to my house, you couldn't tell I'm a race car driver," said Montoya in an exclusive interview with RacingNews365. "There's not a single trophy, not a single helmet. There's nothing. Just a house.
"I'm not attached to physical things like that. I don't care. I care about the process. I am proud of what I've done but I'm not showing off the trophies in the house. It doesn't make my life any better. Seeing my kids would make my day better.
"And the memories are there still with or without the trophies. For me, my family is a big drive, Sebastian [his son] is a big drive, and it's cool. That's why I think people are going to be very surprised when they see it.
"It's very different than what it is and a very different understanding from my side of what I went through all the years because it's not easy."
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After being approached in Monaco last year about the possibility of making the programme, NTERTAIN Studios has so far filmed a pilot it is now pitching to a number of stations.
Montoya has no doubt it will be picked up and that filming will continue. "It just seemed right, the right timing and the right thing to do, and it worked out quite well," he said.
"It's cool to show people that it doesn't matter where you come from, or what you have, that if you really want it you can achieve anything.
"A lot of people will tell you 'You can't' or 'You shouldn't' but if you put your mind to it, you can do it. Nobody is going to say it's easy, nobody's going to say you can't, that it was given to you, but if you really want it, you can get it done.
"That's why I think it's kind of intriguing, it's kind of cool because I'm so different in every aspect. I managed to do IndyCar, NASCAR, Formula 1, endurance racing, and be good at them. You don't get that very often."
Despite the success and the silverware, even if the latter is out of sight, Montoya concedes that his time in motorsport was a hard slog over the years given the effort required for what he considers to be the fleeting moments of joy.
"There's a little bit of everything [in the docuseries]," he said. "The biggest understanding is how little enjoyment you get out of it, and how much hard work you put in behind it, that the five minutes of excitement of winning something is always more of a relief for all the hard work that's put in.
"I have no doubt that it was completely worth it, I did it consciously, and it was really cool. I achieved great things. So was it worth it? Yes. Would I do it again? Fuck, I don't know, but the story is quite cool."
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