Only days after he was though to have raced his last grand prix,
Juan Pablo Montoya has been offered a chance to make a possible racing return after Ron Dennis confirmed that the Colombian has not yet been released from his
McLaren contract and therefore could yet be called back.
Although Montoya was thought to have stepped down in order to gather experience before his move to NASCAR in 2007, Dennis suggested that his contract stipulates that he cannot compete elsewhere until he honours the agreement.
As a result though, Montoya could return to his seat later in the year, with Dennis insisting it is ‘more than possible' once the situation had ‘cooled off'.
“Juan Pablo is fully contracted through to the end of the year, and if we so choose, he will test and race again, so that is at our option, nobody else's,” Dennis claimed in Friday‘s press conference.
“The appropriate course of action for the team was to let the whole thing cool off and let him sit and think about the circumstances that surrounded his involvement in the team until we had a very common objective for the remaining races.”
Furthermore, Dennis confirmed that he would not breach Montoya's contract in order for him to start testing with the Chip Ganassi team, despite the links between Mercedes and Dodge through their DaimlerChrysler parent company.
“He is a contracted McLaren driver and it will stay that way until the end of his contract unless there is some other commercial arrangement between ourselves and the Nascar team or Juan himself.”
Test driver Pedro de la Rosa has claimed Montoya's seat in the short-term, with Dennis hinting that the Spaniard will more than likely remain Kimi Raikkonen‘s team-mate, thus halting rumours that either Gary Paffett or
Lewis Hamilton would be in-line for a guest drive later in the year.
