Tiago Monteiro says slicks “was the right call at the time”

Honda’s Tiago Monteiro, along with team-mate Rob Huff, the two Citroëns of Yvan Muller and José María López and Thed Björk’s Volvo all chose to run slicks during the first race of the day at the Hungaroring, which turned out to be the wrong call as the rain started falling after just two laps, but the Portuguese driver says it was the right call at the start of the race.

“We missed an opportunity, at least all the drivers who are fighting for the championship were on the wrong strategy, but that was with reason,” said Monteiro to TouringCarTimes.

“The reading on the out lap was to go for slicks. At that point, if you had to make a decision, it had to be slicks, but it just started drizzling a bit. The first 3-4 laps weren’t too bad, and in my head it was going to stop raining because that was the information we had, but it turned out to be wrong.”

In the drivers’ standings, there’s no change up front with López still leading by two from Monteiro, with Mehdi Bennani making the most significant gain to move up to third after his race win.

“It would have been bad if (Citroën) had been on wets, and it would have been great if we all went on wets as we’d have made a great step.”

With the rain now falling again ahead of the main race, where Monteiro starts fourth on the grid, the Portuguese driver joked: “Now we’re probably all going to go on wets and it’ll dry.”