Tiago Monteiro not downbeat after tough qualifying

Tiago Monteiro will line-up 17th on the grid for the Honda Civic Super 2000 TC’s second outing in the WTCC this weekend at Shanghai, but the Portuguese-driver says it’s still early days in the development of the new car.

Monteiro made it into the all-important Q2 session two weeks ago in Japan, narrowly missing out on tenth place which would have given him pole position for the reversed grid, but at Shanghai the Honda wasn’t able to qualify any better, despite being sixth fastest through the speed traps.

“We must not forget that this is only the second race weekend that we have participated in and we discover a lot of things about the car,” said Monteiro. “The track slips a lot and it is difficult to predict how the grip will evolve, which makes the task a little harder. Finally, even though the lap is long, with about 30 cars on track, we have to deal with traffic and this posed a problem in qualifying.”

The times were tight in the mid-field, with three-tenths of a second covering 12th (which is the limit for Q2) down to 18th place.

“Despite the length of the lap, it was very tight and we only missed 12th place by a fraction. Without traffic and with a little more time to fully exploit the tires, it could made all the difference, but I don’t have any regrets because our priority is to lay a solid foundation for next season,” added Monteiro.