Photo: Castrol Honda WTC Team

Tiago Monteiro talks about his Barcelona testing crash

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WTCC drivers’ championship leader Tiago Monteiro has spoken about his testing crash at Barcelona last month, confirming the cause of the accident was brake failure on his Honda Civic WTCC, and also that he was knocked out in the impact.

The Honda driver has spoken candidly in a video interview with championship promoter Eurosport about the initial stages of the accident, with further information to follow throughout the day.

I’ve been racing for 20 years and I’ve had a few crashes, a few accidents. Some actually quite hard in ChampCar, Indy, in Formula One I had a few hard ones. Even in WTCC, I’ve been there for 10 years now and we had a few hard crashes, especially as you remember last year in the Nordschleife.

But this one after 20 years was the first time that I really got hurt. I must say I was really quite lucky in 20 years to never really get hurt but this one did hurt. We were doing a normal three days test in Barcelona.

On the last run of the last day, which is amazing how things are. It was ten to six PM. At the end of the straightline, which is probably the hardest braking point of the race track, I had no brakes. We had a technical issue. It’s a really strange feeling to have no brakes because your body is waiting for a de-acceleration and nothing happens.

So it was not the ideal point or that to happen obviously because you are at 255kph, you brake very late, but still I tried to get away from the wall in front of me I tried to escape through the right side, I tried to go to corner number two but unfortunately the car jumped on the grass and when it jumped on the grass it started to spin therefore I had a big impact backwards and then lateral, which was obviously quite hard, big Gs but especially the snap, the whiplash that was the part that hurt me the most, all the right side of my body was bruised and hurt.

I realised I was going to hit the wall I protected myself but I don’t remember the impact although I do remember the Nordschleife impact very much, it was very painful, this one was so hard that I got knocked out.