Juan Pablo Montoya turned 50 three days ago, and I am sure that you will join me in wishing him a very happy birthday today, belatedly, with all the requisite noise and Colombian gusto.

Has he retired from racing? Well, sort of. Here is what he told NASCAR journalist Jeff Gluck a year ago: “I’ve stopped full-time driving this year for the first time, and I focus on Sebastián [Montoya’s 20-year-old son who is now racing for Prema in Formula 2]. But I didn’t want to go out and say, ‘Oh, I’m announcing my retirement.’ Screw that. I don’t need to announce anything to anybody. If I don’t want to drive, I’ll just stop driving.” Vintage Montoya: no sugar-coating, no PR script, just straight from the hip and into your chest. “And I did stop, and I was comfortable not doing a full-time schedule. But I still really enjoy driving, karting, and doing stuff. So when a one-off opportunity like this [to race a NASCAR Cup car at Watkins Glen] comes along, you go, ‘Hell yeah!’”

That race took place a year and a day ago. It was Montoya’s first NASCAR Cup race for 10 years, so we should not be surprised that he qualified his Toyota 34th and raced it to 32nd. But he was back in a race car, and that alone was enough to put a smile on many a motor sport nostalgist’s face. From 2006 to 2014 he had driven 255 NASCAR Cup races, first for Chip Ganassi then for Roger Penske, winning one of them, at Sonoma in 2007, in a Ganassi-run Dodge, thereby becoming the first foreign driver to win a NASCAR Cup race since Canada’s Earl Ross had triumphed at Martinsville in 1974 in a Junior Johnson-run Chevy.

But it is in single-seaters that Montoya was at his brilliant – and most versatile – best. In 1997, racing under the auspices of Red Bull’s Helmut Marko, he won three International Formula 3000 races, finishing second in the series; in 1998, racing for Super Nova’s David Sears, he dominated the same series, winning four times and becoming champion. When F1 doors failed to open for him in 1999, he crossed the Atlantic and kicked them down instead, bagging himself a CART drive with Ganassi, winning seven times, and becoming CART champion in his rookie season. A year later, in 2000, he won three CART races and one IRL race: the legendary Indianapolis 500.

In the mid and late 1990s Frank Williams had not been shy to cast his net across the Atlantic in his efforts to capture the best drivers for his beloved Formula 1 team. He had run Jacques Villeneuve in 1996, 1997, and 1998, and Alex Zanardi in 1999 — and now, for 2001, he did it again, and the result was that at last Montoya would race in F1.

Just three grands prix into his rookie F1 season, in Brazil, we saw that, far from being cowed by the F1 GOATs all around him — multiple F1 world champions such as Michael Schumacher and Mika Häkkinen — Montoya had decided to approach the pinnacle of global motor sport with the kind of daredevil braggadocio that intimidates rivals, alarms mechanics, and thrills spectators. So it was that, at Interlagos in 2001, immediately after a safety car deployment had come to an end, Montoya, on cold tyres, powered his Williams along the start-finish straight just a couple of metres behind Schumacher’s leading Ferrari. Braking later than late on the dusty inside line, he then muscled his way past Schumi into the Senna S chicane, even as Michael was trying his damnedest to squeeze him out. The two cars touched, but Juan Pablo did not flinch, and, wheel to wheel, he pushed Michael wide, right onto the grass, to retain his lead into Curva do Sol. He then led the next 36 laps like the seasoned F1 pro that he was not, before being nerfed off at Curva do Laranjinha by Arrows’ Jos Verstappen, which coming-together ended both their races.

Devastatingly quick and formidably combative, Schumacher was in his pomp in 2001 — and consequently other drivers very rarely treated him as aggressively as he routinely treated them. Yet Montoya, the rookie upstart from across the pond, had just done exactly that. He continued to drive fast and hard all year, finally winning at Monza, having taken the pole, and he finished the season with a fine second place at Suzuka, just 3.154sec behind Schumacher’s winning Ferrari. He had well and truly arrived, and the F1 world duly sat up and took notice.

The following year, 2002, he finished third in the F1 drivers’ world championship, best of the rest behind the Ferrari duo of Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello, posting seven pole positions at Interlagos, Monaco, Montreal, Nürburgring, Silverstone, Magny-Cours, and Monza, and finishing second in Melbourne, Sepang, Barcelona, and Hockenheim, and third at the A1-Ring, Silverstone, and Spa. In 2003 he won at Monaco and Hockenheim, remaining in contention for the F1 drivers’ world championship until the penultimate round, at Indianapolis, where he finished sixth after the FIA stewards had controversially awarded him a drive-through penalty after a collision with Barrichello, extinguishing his world championship chances there and then.

By now he was widely and justifiably regarded as F1’s resident master of the white-knuckle balls-to-the-wall quali-lap, albeit a bit of a bruiser on race days. In truth, at his best, he was majestically rapid. In 2004, in Q1 at Monza, he drove the then fastest lap in F1 history, a 1min 19.525sec scorcher that equated to an average of 162.950mph (262.242km/h). He was then beaten in Q2 by Barrichello, who thereby took the pole, but Montoya’s Q1 lap had been six-tenths faster than Rubens’ pole lap and it is Juan Pablo’s magnificent effort that has therefore lived on in F1 fans’ collective memories.

Ten years later, at Monza in 2014, I watched it with Kevin Magnussen, at that time a race driver for McLaren, for which team I was then the comms/PR chief. “This is a mega lap, Kev,” I said, dialling it up on my laptop for us both to see.

Magnussen was then a 21-year-old lead-foot who was fast, confident of his own ability, and therefore very difficult to impress. At first he gave my MacBook only his cursory attention — then, as Montoya flung his Williams through the two Lesmo right-handers, Kevin’s jaw dropped and he began to stare. As Variante Ascari was dispatched in three bold sweeps of the hands, Kevin said “Wow!” very quietly. He said it again at Parabolica, then, as the lap ended, he whooped, clapped, and finally declared, “That was a f***ing awesome lap, man!” It was indeed.

Montoya was now combative off track as well as on it. He no longer disguised his impatience with his media duties, and he was sometimes rude to Williams’ sponsors. But, although he was often blunt, perhaps a bit too blunt, he was also irresistibly human. One moment he was snarling about the length of a photoshoot; the next he was joshing with a mate, chomping on a burger while still in his race suit, a smear of mayo unnoticed on his chin.

He was also becoming a bit podgy — and his love of burgers did not help. His critics began to say: “If only he trained harder, if only he had the discipline of some of his rivals.” But genius, we know, resists discipline in part because it does not wholly require it. Montoya has more times than most made up for what he has lacked in professionalism and fitness by sheer natural speed. In qualifying he often ruined track records; in races he sometimes pushed his car right to its limit, thereby extracting something unexpectedly brilliant. And yet his reliance on his innate ability was also his drawback. Others toiled; others obsessed over exercise regimens, diet plans, aero maps, tyre strategies, and the like. Montoya’s style was to trust his gut — and when it worked, it worked in a way that looked and felt sublime. But when it did not work, it sucked.

When Ron Dennis hired him to McLaren for the 2005 season, I duly feared for him. Dennis liked his drivers to be clean-cut, pristine, disciplined, robotic even. The result — three grand prix wins in one and a half F1 seasons — was not too shabby, but was it good enough? Not for a driver of Montoya’s wondrous talent, no, it was not, and especially not when you consider that he was owned during that period by his McLaren team-mate, Kimi Räikkönen. In 2005 Juan Pablo won three grands prix, but Kimi won seven. He left McLaren before the end of the 2006 season, and that was that as far as F1 was concerned.

From there he went to NASCAR, as I have already described, after which, in 2014, aged 39, he returned to IndyCar. There it was that he was able to relocate his mojo, reunited with Penske, winning at Pocono, St Petersburg twice, and Indy again, thereby becoming one of only 21 drivers to have won the Brickyard’s greatest race more than once. At that time Alex Wurz was a senior consultant for Williams, lending his expertise and wisdom to Claire Williams and Mike O’Driscoll, and I remember that Alex floated the idea of trying to tempt Juan Pablo back to F1, and specifically back to Williams. It never happened, but in many ways it might have been wonderful, for, although Montoya was now pushing 40, he was still quick and undoubtedly he had unfinished F1 business to complete. Instead he persisted with IndyCar, after which he made a sideways move to IMSA, also with Penske, eventually winning the IMSA championship in 2019, aged 44.

And so it occurs to me that Montoya may be racing’s ultimate nearly‑man. As gifted as anyone who has ever been strapped into a race car, he was nonetheless never an F1 world champion, although he is right up there in terms of natural ability with that group of kings who were also never crowned, which short list is headed by Stirling Moss and includes Gilles Villeneuve, Jacky Ickx, Ronnie Peterson, and Carlos Reutemann.

Finally, it is often said that Fernando Alonso, who has won the Monaco Grand Prix and the Le Mans 24 Hours, may yet win racing’s elusive triple crown – that magical trifecta achieved only by Graham Hill – victory in the Monaco Grand Prix, the Le Mans 24 Hours, and the Indianapolis 500 – but we racing romantics should not discount Montoya’s chances. He has won at Monaco and at Indy; his missing jewel is Le Mans.

He has raced at the Circuit de la Sarthe three times, in 2018, 2020, and 2021, finishing 15th overall and first in the LMP2 Pro-Am class in 2021, in a DragonSpeed-entered Oreca. So wouldn’t it be a magnificent curtain call to his mighty fine yet still somehow frustrating career if Alpine, Aston Martin, BMW, Cadillac, Ferrari, Peugeot, Porsche, or Toyota were to give him the belated 50th birthday present of a seat in one of their hypercars next June? One last dance; one last chance. Just imagine him charging through the night at Le Mans, reinvigorated 50-year-old ambition driving his exertion, the ghosts of a thousand races whispering encouragement in his ear. And just imagine if he were to reward the gift by emulating what 43-year-old Graham Hill achieved in 1972, when he won at Le Mans and became, as uniquely he has remained these past 53 years, the only driver to win racing’s triple crown? No, I know it won’t happen, but it should, shouldn’t it?