Double points for Tiago Monteiro in Slovakia‏ WTCC

Tiago Monteiro managed to minimize the damage to his qualifying disappointment this weekend when he finished both races held in Slovakia in the points. Penalized in qualifying by a ballast of 60 kg and hampered with electronic gremlins, the Honda Civic # 18 driver was unable to do any better than the 17th fastest time.

The 11th and 12th rounds oa the FIA WTCC Touring Car World Championship, however, saw the Portuguese racer put in two spectacular performances that awarded him points for 8th and 9th places. A small feat in such a highly competitive championship where grid position plays such a big role in the final result.

Aware of the difficulty of the task ahead, Tiago focused all his efforts on the start. He reaped the benefits of a good getaway by moving up several places in the first meters of both races and scoring valuable championship points. "I caught up in both, coming from the back of the field to have a little taste of victory. Both races were very hard, but I did not want to admit defeat," said Tiago. "I adopted a very aggressive strategy because I knew the challenge would be very difficult to overcome. To get into the points I had to pass many opponents and fortunately that is what I managed to do, not once, but twice. The team and I are delighted with the performance of the car in the races today."

Tiago and the team's next mission will be to understand the problems that affected the Honda Civic in qualifying. "We will analyze all the details so that it does not happen again," confirmed Tiago. "We identified that there were some electronic problems, but they alone do not explain our poor performance. We will make every effort to understand what happened and improve it before the next round. Starting from the back of the pack is not a situation where we want to be. Fortunately, we managed to limit the damage and we will try to get two good results at Paul Ricard next week."


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