Tiago Monteiro qualifies 7th and 4th on the grid for Morocco races
Citroën easily dominating the Honda Civic over a lap of the Moulay El Hassan circuit.
Tiago Monteiro, Honda Civic WTCC, Castrol Honda WTC Team
FIA WTCC
The start of the 2014 FIA World Touring Car Championship, WTCC, which takes place this weekend in Morocco, has been reminiscent of winter testing. Tiago Monteiro did not have an easy time in either free practice or qualifying: Citroën easily dominating the Honda Civic over a lap of the Moulay El Hassan circuit. The Portuguese driver had anticipated that the French outfit would be the dominate one and has used all the weapons at his disposal to achieve the best possible result. This saw him qualifying in 7th and 4th places on the two starting grids of the Moroccan weekend.
This overall result was not a complete surprise to Tiago, who had stressed before the race weekend that there was still a need to continue the development of the Honda Civic.
"Today brought confirmation of what we had thought, we still have a lot of work to do. We were also faced with several small problems that affected the overall performance and reliability of our car, and therefore our driving confidence," explained Tiago Monteiro, who finished the day as the leading Honda driver.
In the Honda and Jas Motorsport outfit, teammate Gabriele Tarquini was left unable to participate in qualifying due to an incident in free practice. The Italian was even forced to forfeit the two races here tomorrow. "I'm sorry this happened to Gabriele and I hope he will come back even stronger next time," Tiago said.
Many times in the past, Tiago Monteiro has demonstrated that his grid position was not really an obstacle when it came to securing a good result in the race. "The grid positions are not worrying," he confirmed, "the performance difference between us and the best cars is more worrying. But also on a specific circuit like this, anything can happen, and, as I've always said, the most important thing to do is finish both races and score points."
Tiago Monteiro
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