This week's Grapevine brings you information fresh from the paddock on: Montoya isolating himself Minardi checking engine options

Montoya isolating himself

Never ones to mince words, Jacques Villeneuve and Juan-Pablo Montoya had a frank exchange of views in the drivers' briefing, ultimately leading to blows, and a warning from Charlie Whiting to cool down, or face a two race ban.

The background has been well covered in the media: Villeneuve felt that Montoya blocked him, and responded by brake testing the Colombian. It proved an ill-fated manoeuvre, as Montoya "failed" the test by punting Villeneuve, leading to the Canadian sitting out the remainder of the day.

Of course, going badly in front of his home crowd – and forty family members – feelings were running high for Villeneuve, and he accused Montoya of dangerous driving. Montoya pointed out the obvious (Australia), and things, as they say, deteriorated rapidly from there.

As a rule, when a couple of drivers have a falling out, the remainder have little to say on the subject; spats happen, and they get sorted out again. For the most part, everyone has enough on their plate without getting involved in other folks concerns.

That said, Montoya has not been making friends amongst the drivers, and is starting to find himself isolated by them. They generally hold him to be a "nice enough chap," but consider him arrogant and opinionated. He has blocked most of them at some time or other, and is rarely bothered enough by it to apologise. Indeed, his whole approach is phlegmatic – he gets blocked too, but sees it as part of the job, and doesn't expect apologies. So unless he's way out of line, he doesn't give them.

Whilst the racing driver breed attracts large egos, and the inevitable clashes of personality these bring, it has been a while since any driver was so isolated by their apparent arrogance: since then, the driver in question has gone on to demonstrate the arrogance was justified by becoming a triple World Champion. Give that it didn't pose any problems for Schumacher, it seems unlikely Montoya will be any too worried by the situation.

Minardi checking engine options

Following the loss of Gustav Brunner, Minardi have not been sitting on their laurels, hoping that the courts will do them any favours. Although the 2001 car is relatively useful, it is driven by an outdated engine; the 2002 chassis is penned, give or take some detailed aerodynamic work still to come, and offers a good step forward. However, that step is significantly compromised without a halfway decent engine in the car – something that Paul Stoddart is not only aware of, but working almost single mindedly on resolving.

Since the Minardi announcement that an engine deal was imminent, most of the paddock have been of the mind that Ford or Renault will be the originating company. Either of which makes sense… Ford have supplied Minardi for years, despite publicly "closing" their customer program. Minardi have managed to finish off the bottom of the grid, despite this, for two years in a row; given the Jaguar branding on their continued project, introducing a properly customer unit makes a lot of marketing sense.

On a different note, Minardi have some good ties with Benetton, or rather Renault. Alonso's contract is Flavio Briatore's, and he is supposed to be on loan from Renault for two years, though there are a number of complicated break clauses written in. Should Briatore wish to bring Alonso onboard a year earlier, then promising a supply of decent engines in return is something of a sweetener – and Renault have expressed an interest in recovering some of their development costs from running both chassis and engine.

However, with no announcement forthcoming in Canada, more rumours are circulating...

The Arrows AMT deal is very open ended; Arrows have a full works agreement for 2001, with a customer deal for 2002. If the engines live up to expectations, they will pay for them next year. However, whilst reliability has been good, Arrows are unhappy with the development program, which has failed to net significant improvements so far. If they drop AMT, then the company is free to pursue other interests – and Minardi is a hot favourite. The team has not much of a budget to spare for engines, but the Asian consortium does see Minardi as a good strategic partner: should Stoddart want out, they could take on the team; meanwhile, the team is surprisingly popular, and therefore has a good marketing profile.

The other engine being mentioned is BMW – and that's a bit of a surprise. Despite protestations to the contrary, BMW are supposed to be in the frame with their 2000 unit. It was a good engine for Williams last year, providing a strong and reliable base for the car. Almost nothing was carried over to this year's unit, so there is little concern over secrets migrating through the pitlane; and dimensionally, it is a good fit for Minardi's 2002 design…. As to why BMW would be interested, it appears that the Formula One effort required to produce the front running engine is costing a lot of money – so being able to make some of the effort pay for itself, on top of sponsor income, is very welcome.

Of them all, perhaps the most promising, but least likely, alternatives for Minardi is the BMW deal. But then again, almost anything would be better than their current engine – being four years out of date is just not an option.