The Castrol Honda team and their sister team, Zengö Motorsport encountered a tough end to their European part of the 2013 World Touring Car Championship on the streets of Porto.
Local driver Tiago Monteiro secured a ninth place finish in the opening race of the weekend – a result which proved to be the teams’ only points finish – having qualified outside the top 12 in 14th.
He couldn’t replicate the points finish in the second race of the day as he finished 11th as part of a seven car train. At the end of the second race, Monteiro joked: “Can I go to the beach now?”
“It has been a really tough weekend but the positives are that we have two super sound cars to send to South America for the race in Argentina at the start of the fly-away events in this World Championship,” said a positive Monteiro.
“I would have liked to give my fans more to cheer for but that is racing. Some weekends just don’t go as you hope. I want to say a big thank you to all the Portuguese fans who came to support me and the whole WTCC show. It has been quite emotional for me to meet so many people who really care about my results and wish me well.”
Gabriele Tarquini suffered a testing end to his European part of the 2013 World Touring Car Championship as he retired from the opening race with a turbocharger issue.
Lining up at the back of the grid after the car was pulled from parc ferme conditions, the 2009 Champion used the final European race as a test session to evaluate changes to the #3 Honda Civic.
“I let the field get away in front of me for a couple of laps and then put in two or three really hot laps to assess our changes. My fastest lap was the 7th quickest of everyone in the race so we have that data for the future,” explained Tarquini, who finished 20th overall.
Norbert Michelisz ended up with a weekend to forget as damaged sustained in race one meant that he was ruled out of the second race and potentially the start of the overseas leg of the Championship.
“The alternative is to take the car back to base, repair it there completely and then try and find an economic airfreight route to South America in time for the race in August,” said a downbeat Michelisz.