Tiago Monteiro: “I thought everything was over”

Honda’s Tiago Monteiro went to Qatar with an outside chance at taking second place in the drivers’ standings from Yvan Muller, but after an accident in the opening race, the focus quickly switched to keeping third from his two Honda team-mates Norbert Michelisz and Rob Huff, with the JAS Motorsport team quickly repairing his Civic and getting it back out for the main race.

The 40-year-old was involved in an incident with Citroën’s José María López on the first lap, which saw Monteiro’s car pitched into the temporary tyre stacks which had mixed reaction from the drivers throughout the weekend, having taken out two of the Hondas on race day.

“They were very difficult races,” said Monteiro to TouringCarTimes. “The first race was very frustrating. I had a good start but everybody was very aggressive in the first few corners. I didn’t want to crash as I knew I needed to finish just behind Norbi, but at the hairpin somebody hit me, I hit Pechito, I overtook him and then he hits me back. It was nobody’s fault, it was a race incident, it was just 2-3 cars side-by-side touching each other at the wrong places.

“But I really hate those stupid tyres; they really destroyed the car and really hurt my head, they were more dangerous than anything else. I thought everything was over, but the team did a great job and repaired the car in eight to nine minutes as both the rear sides of the car were destroyed.”

In the second race, Monteiro was chasing his championship rival and team-mate Michelisz in order to hold on to third place in the championship. The Portuguese driver had run in second in the standings through most of the season, only falling behind Yvan Muller at the last race meeting, but it wasn’t until the last lap that he was able to put himself in position to grab third back from his Hungarian competitor.

“I needed to finish just behind Norbi in order to finish third, but he took advantage of a small mistake from Yvan to overtake him and after that it was tricky,” said Monteiro.

“(Then) at some point Gabriele (Tarquini) hit me, I go wide and lose a place, but then Gabriele let me past because he’d pushed me, and then I caught Yvan and Norbi. We were all pushing like crazy, but Yvan just went a bit wide on the sand, got some wheelspin so I saw my opportunity down the inside for the next corner and we went side-by-side, and I didn’t care, we were either going to crash or I’d pass him. He told me he saw I was very aggressive, so he guessed I needed the place to finish third in the championship.”