There are Formula 1 drivers and then there are Formula 1 drivers who get their road licence confiscated by French police for doing 204 km/h on a public motorway. On 12 May 2003, Juan Pablo Montoya became the second kind. He was travelling between Le Muy and Fréjus in the south of France when officers intervened with the kind of administrative efficiency that the French state reserves for special occasions. The licence was gone. The car, presumably, was still capable of more.
The incident
French law at the time treated speeds above 40 km/h over the limit as grounds for immediate confiscation of the driving licence, and 204 km/h on a motorway with a 130 km/h limit cleared that threshold with considerable room to spare. Montoya was stopped, processed and relieved of his documentation.
The stretch of motorway between Le Muy and Fréjus is in the Var department, a corner of Provence where the roads are pleasant and the scenery is good and where the local gendarmerie apparently had functioning radar equipment.
Context that does not particularly excuse anything
Montoya was in the middle of the 2003 Formula 1 season, in which he was mounting a genuine championship challenge with Williams-BMW. He was also, by any available measure, a man who did not experience speed as something requiring special justification. His approach to motorways, it turns out, was consistent with his approach to most things involving an accelerator pedal.
A Formula 1 driver losing a driving licence for speeding occupies a specific comedic niche. These are people paid to go as fast as possible, trained to go as fast as possible, and occasionally reminded that public roads operate under a different regulatory framework. The reminder, in Montoya’s case, came via a French police officer somewhere in Provence on a May afternoon.
A minor detail to a significant season
The 2003 season ended with Montoya finishing third in the championship behind Michael Schumacher and Kimi Raikkonen. His French licence situation is not believed to have been a contributing factor in that outcome. He continued racing, continued qualifying at the front, and continued being precisely the kind of person who would be caught doing 204 km/h on a French motorway and treated it as one of those things that happen.
