Tiago Monteiro: Looking back to front.

Saturday, 24th March 2007

Everything was already agreed [with Spyker], but my sponsors wanted more too so we agreed to look elsewhere - I wasn’t motivated to continue struggling with a team where I couldn’t see any evolution in the short-term.

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At that time though, I had had lots of proposals from teams in sportscars, the DTM, Champ Cars and the WTCC, but I knew straight away that I only wanted to be in a professional works team that was as professional as I was when I was in F1.

Indeed, the sportscar, DTM and Champ Car offers were not as good as I wanted them to be, but the deal that was proposed by SEAT Sport in the WTCC was a lot more enticing and offered me what I wanted – a proper works factory drive with the professionalism I was used to.

True, it is a completely different championship, but the level of the WTCC is growing a lot and, even though we are talking very different budgets for running in the WTCC compared to F1, it is still the same organisational systems, the way things are handled, and I was very, very impressed with that.

Of course, there is no one perfect championship. When you come out of F1, everything is very different. There is nothing higher than F1, so you can’t go to another lateral series in terms of exposure and everything, but the WTCC had more pros to cons than any of the others.

I have to say that racing in front of my home fans at Porto in July had to be one of the pluses of the WTCC when we looked at each championship – it wasn’t the main factor, but it was certainly important to me. I think it will be big for the fans that there is a Portuguese driver to cheer on. The last time I raced in Portugal was in 2004 and we saw how big the impact was then, so it will be bigger this time, because there is a Portuguese driver who has spent two-and-a-half years in F1.

Even more than that, however, was the strength and the pressure I had from the organisers of the whole championship to have a current F1 driver in the programme. They made a huge effort to have me there, and the initial negotiations with SEAT went very smoothly and very quickly because there was a huge movement from the organisers to have me there. I felt really welcomed and really wanted to be there, and all this made my decision easier.