By Huw Alban
June 12 2006

After the excitement of breaking into the second qualifying session on Saturday, it was back to earth with a bump (literally) for Tiago Monteiro. Two slow pit stops and an M16 that was bottoming out on the straights almost forced the Portuguese driver to park the car.

"I didn't have an easy race, but in general the weekend was very good. We drove well in qualifying and went onto the second session, but unfortunately our lack of experience didn't help us manage the used tyres," he has been quoted as saying to Portuguese Autosport.

"The two pit stops didn't run well. In the first a right back wheel delayed me, losing a lot of time swapping it around and two places, from 14th to 16th. At the second stop it was the fuel hose that had problems releasing from the port on the car." I can bear witness to this. Regular readers will know that MF1O was at the British Grand Prix on Sunday and bored witness to Tiago loosing places after his first pit stop; now we know why.

Shortly before his first stop it became increasingly obvious that Christijan Albers had better pace than his team mate, and Tiago revealed that he was actually carrying a mechanical problem with his front suspensiom that was causing his M16 to bottom out on the high speed straights. "I know that there are unavoidable things that can happen at any time. With the back suspension getting worse, the car was hitting the track especially on the straights, and I really wanted to park the car in the garage. My engineer encouraged me to bring the car to the finish."

In usual form Monteiro soldiered on, encouraged by the team and his engineers to bring the car home to the chequered flag and despite his problems is still encouraged by the progress the team is making throughout the season.

"I fought very hard to do just that, knowing that the team were aware of my driving conditions. It's a shame, because if it wasn't for these problems then the team would have what they deserved especially after working so hard to get into the second qualifying session. Still, it's a good indication of things to come."

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