Tiago Monteiro will start rounds 21 and 22 of the 2012 World Touring Car Championship from 17th position after qualifying in Shanghai.
The Portuguese driver, who is driving the Honda Civic for the second time in a race weekend was unable to replicate his performance from Friday testing, where he finished fourth fastest.
“We must not forget that this is only the second race weekend that we have participated in and we discover a lot of things about the car,” said Monteiro, who is using the Chinese race weekend as a test ahead of the 2013 campaign. “The track slips a lot and it is difficult to predict how the grip will evolve, which makes the task a little harder. Finally, even though the lap is long, with about 30 cars on track, we have to deal with traffic and this posed a problem in qualifying.”
Qualifying saw Monteiro post the 14th fastest time during his first run before rejoining for a final run right at the end of the session but traffic meant that he missed out on a place in the top twelve and a chance to repeat his Suzuka qualifying performance.
“Despite the length of the lap, it was very tight and we only missed 12th place by a fraction. Without traffic and with a little more time to fully exploit the tires, it could made all the difference, but I don’t have any regrets because our priority is to lay a solid foundation for next season,” said Monteiro.
The former Formula 1 driver took positives from the session despite the result: “From this point of view it was a success because we now understand the Honda Civic even better and its behaviour on a technical circuit such as Shanghai, which is very different from that of Suzuka where we raced two weeks ago. In the races the objective will be to make full use of the potential of the Honda Civic and try to get back into the top 10.”