Alain Menu and Tiago Monteiro differ on Huff contact

Chevrolet’s Alain Menu and SUNRED driver Tiago Monteiro don’t see eye to eye on the incident which saw Rob Huff forced off circuit on the opening lap of race one, both blaming each other for the incident which sent Huff off the track.

Tarquini had wrestled the lead off of Yvan Muller through Turn 2, with Rob Huff behind and Alain Menu moving up to fourth ahead of Monteiro. Into Turn 4 Monteiro makes contact with the rear of Menu, and Menu with the rear of Huff, but in which order is down to the drivers interpretations.

Initially the stewards reaction was that Menu was at fault, serving the Swiss-driver with a drive through penalty, but before he had a chance to serve it the stewards suspended the decision, turning their attention instead to Tiago Monteiro, but no further penalties on the incident were forthcoming.

“Right from the beginning Menu was completely way too aggressive, and hit me about four times on the second straight which damaged my front-left wheel,” said Monteiro to TouringCarTimes.

“After three or four laps this plus the degradation of the tyres just got crazy, way more than we were expecting,” added Monteiro who eventually slid down the order to eighth place.

“I saw some people from Chevy and they said that I touched Menu. I touched Menu because he touched Huff, I’m really close to him going back on the power and he suddenly stops, but he doesn’t brake because I didn’t see his lights – so he obviously touched somebody as he suddenly stops. ”

“Actually I didn’t know he was so close to Huff but when he slows down and I touch him and he goes sideways and then I see Huff sideways and then I realise okay, he was pushing Huff.”

Alain Menu begged to differ, placing the blame solely at the Portuguese driver.

“Basically Tiago Monteiro was driving like a lunatic the first four of five corners,” said Menu. “He almost drove me into the grass between Turn 1 and Turn 2 which would have been very dangerous, and then into Turn 4 he just tapped me in the back and I was close to Rob so I couldn’t avoid hitting Rob, so it’s unfortunate, but if it wasn’t for Monteiro it would have been fine.”

The full replay of race one is available below: