Six months ago the paddock was buzzing with his name. It was like the Old West and some darn fool had started a rumour that Billy the Kid was coming to town with his eyes fixed on every gunslinger there was.

The Juan Pablo Montoya machine was up and running and Formula One would soon be rocked to its foundations as the rookie season CART champion and first time out Indy 500 winner ambled into Dodge with a fistful of casually earned titles and a reputation as big as the rumoured size of his ego. The Formula One career undertakers began cutting out some pretty large pine boxes.

And then nothing. Juan Pablo Montoya did indeed come to town but all he brought was a contemplative silence and an eagerness to learn. The gunfights never happened. Shots were never fired. Even now, the supposedly fiery Colombian shows no signs of impending fireworks. In the Melbourne paddock yesterday he went unnoticed out of his race suit, strolling into the Williams hospitality garden unmolested and unremarked. If he hadn't had a pass draped around his neck somebody might have called security.

He chats amiably about Formula One, about his chequered flag-bedecked past, about his passion for computer games. He's calm, assured and opinionated, sure, but hardly the ogre some have described him as.

The only man before him to claim a CART championship in his rookie year was Nigel Mansell and the Englishman was a 40year-old former Formula One champion when he did it. Montoya was 23.

It took Jacques Villeneuve, rated by most as being the only driver apart from Mika Hakkinen who could take Michael Schumacher on in a straight fight, two years to take his first CART title and his Indy 500 win. Montoya took his Indy at his first attempt.

But to Montoya they are just statistics. Sure they're landmarks for him, personal bests, but they are past now. He has bigger fish to fry, more firsts to notch on his gun's stock.

"I could have stayed in America, I would have got a lot more there," he said this week. "But I want to be the best and my target is to become world champion. I race because I love it. It's my passion - my passion to win and to push a car to its limits. I would race for half the money I'm getting."

Ralf Schumacher, for one, would love to see Montoya get just that by moving to a team with fewer resources and poorer machinery. Montoya's team-mate is being pushed harder than ever by the Colombian, and already tempers are reportedly fraying in the Williams motorhomes. Montoya has downplayed the rumours, saying that the friction does not exist. But the sugar-coating was spiced with a dusting of disregard.

"We're not boyfriends. We don't have to get on. If he wants to get on that's okay and if he doesn't that's okay too."

Part of the friction stems from Montoya's instinctive grasp of how a Formula One car feels, a leap Schumacher, grounded in the failure of CART star Alex Zanardi to do likewise, was not expecting so soon. The German has felt the pressure, particularly in the wet, an arena in which Schumacher would be regarded as one of the best.

"Testing has gone well," said Montoya yesterday. "So far so good. Some tracks have been better than others. I've done plenty of miles so we'll have to see how fast the car is going to be here.

"I think the Kyalami test (in South Africa) was important because apart from BAR-Honda we are the only team to have tested in hot weather. I think for the tyres and everything this is a plus."

The Colombian's undoing this weekend, however, might lie not with his own efforts but those of his car. The FW23 has suffered from niggling reliability problems in tests, but at Kyalami the car ran well and Motoya forecast no technical worries for Sunday.

"I'm not really worried about reliability," he shrugged. "We've done some long runs with the car and it seems to be quite good."

But even if the car does let him down Montoya will refuse to be undone by a failure to meet expectations. He may be the newest, fastest gun but before he draws he wants to sure all his weapons are in working order.

"I haven't got any particular targets. I have a lot of time and I want to get used to the car," he says and then deadpans, "and afterwards drive it to the limit. Like I always do."