Tiago Monteiro has spoken for the first time of the accident he had during recent World Touring Car Championship testing in Valencia, caused by brake failure, which the Honda star says ‘really hurt’.
Monteiro was taking part in a private Honda event at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in September when his car suffered from a brake failure at the end of the long main straight.
At the time the cause of the shunt was not reported, with Monteiro subsequently being taken to hospital on the day for an MRI scan and an overnight stay.
The Portuguese star was nearing the end of his time in the car during the test when the accident happened, and he has spoken of the accident in a recent interview with WTCC broadcaster Eurosport.
“I’ve been racing for twenty years and I’ve had a few crashes, a few accidents,” said Monteiro. “Some actually quite hard in ChampCar, Indy, in Formula One I had a few hard ones.
“Even in WTCC, I’ve been there for 10 years now and we had a few hard crashes, especially last year on the [Nürburgring] Nordschleife. But this one was the first time that I really got hurt.
“I must say I was really quite lucky in 20 years to never really get hurt but this one did hurt.”
Monteiro described the point when the accident happened, as he was on a flying lap at the end of the day of activities.
“We were doing a normal three day test in Barcelona, on the last run of the last day, which is amazing how things are,” continued the 49-year-old. “It was ten to six PM.
“At the end of the straight, which is probably the hardest braking point of the race track, I had no brakes; we had a technical issue.
“It’s a really strange feeling to have no brakes, because your body is waiting for a de-acceleration and nothing happens. So it was not the ideal point or that to happen obviously because you are at 255 kph, you brake very late, but still I tried to get away from the wall in front of me.
“I tried to escape through the right side, I tried to go to corner number two, but unfortunately the car jumped on the grass and when it jumped on the grass it started to spin.
“I had a big impact backwards and then laterally, which was obviously quite hard, [with] big Gs, but especially the snap, the whiplash was the part that hurt me the most. All of the right side of my body was bruised and hurt.
“I realised I was going to hit the wall I protected myself but I don’t remember the impact although I do remember the Nordschleife impact very much, it was very painful, this one was so hard that I got knocked out.”
Monteiro, who is the current WTCC points leader, will return to action next weekend when the championship visits the brand new Ningbo International Speedpark in China.
Video: Monteiro talks about testing shunt