By Huw Alban
November 22 2005

In the second bizarre story this week, Tiago Monteiro has chosen to confirm a 2006 drive with Midland only to have Colin Kolles deny the arrangement ! This is one thing I love about the ‘silly season’ – you just never know what’s going to break next – and this is a corker ! At a sports ceremony in Portugal, Tiago Monteiro received a prize for achievements in motorsport and in his acceptance speech chose to announce that he had secured a 2006 race drive with Midland.

"You can never be 100% sure when the contract is going to be signed so it was clearly a huge relief to sign and now I'm looking forward to start testing with the team again," Monteiro was quoted as saying at the ceremony.

"At this moment we are in a much better position than we were at the start of the 2005 season. Because we have signed the deal with four months to go before the season starts, while last season we only had one month to prepare everything."

The driver also revealed that he had been in encouraging talks with Williams about a possible ‘Friday’ drive. "At my age the more races I do, the better. I'm very proud Williams approached me and I thank Frank Williams for believing in me, but he also understands I prefer to race."

As you can imagine, since the speech Midland PR have been hounded by the media looking for official team confirmation. Midland team principal Colin Kolles has been quick to quash the news.

"There is nothing signed at this moment with Monteiro," he was quoted as saying to F1Racing.net. "We do have an option on him and he is the most likely to be signed at the moment - it isn't secured yet though. We will announce our second driver at the right moment."