Tiago Monteiro “won’t give up” on championship fight with López

Tiago Monteiro leapt back to second in the drivers’ championship following a sensational victory in front of his home crowd at Vila Real, and despite the gap to Citroën’s José María López being a fairly substantial 101 points, the Portuguese driver said he’ll fight until the end.

Monteiro led the main race from pole to finish, fighting off unrelenting pressure from the other Citroën of four-time champion Yvan Muller to secure his ninth career victory, and his third at his home race.

“This was a moment that I’ll remember forever,” said Monteiro. “I will keep it in my head, in my heart. I cannot thank everybody enough for this to have happened today. Of course you need a great team behind you, great people, and it was such an important moment of course. A lot of people from Honda are here to see this great event, and the support I’ve been getting for the last few months on the build up to this event has been crazy.”

“To do a pole position and to win our home race is unbelievable. I could hear people while I was in the car, we have the engine and I have earplugs but I could hear people (over that), shouting on the last few laps.”

Monteiro’s closed the gap to López, albeit only by ten points, but now moves up to second place in the standings to be the Argentinian’s main rival heading to his home race in August.

“We’re going to be on his home ground and he has a big advantage, but I said I won’t give up and I won’t give up,” he said. “Mathematically it’s still possible. Of course we need a bit of luck, bit with pressure as you can see in qualifying he can make mistakes, just like everybody can make mistakes. This is a high pressure environment and everybody can break, so we’ll try to apply this pressure until the end of the season.”