Last week, Tiago Monteiro, Gabriele Tarquini and the entire Honda team spent four days at the Spanish circuit of Motorland Aragon to put the Honda Civic, aimed for the 2014 FIA World Touring Car Championship, which begins in April, through its paces.
Four days of intense work saw the Portuguese driver and his team cover many kilometers and run through a multitude of items as they began development work on the new Honda Civic 2014. Tiago Monteiro was pleasantly surprised by his new machine and its potential and he predicts that the 2014 season will be very different from 2013.
"We tested everything we needed to in this first session. The past four days have been very productive," enthused Tiago. "We still have a lot of work to do, but this first outing with the Honda Civic 2014 was extremely interesting and promising."
"I loved the car! It is completely different from the 2013 version. It is a pleasure to drive and I could immediately feel the increase in power, downforce and weight reduction. It’s very nice, but also its more complex to get the most out of it. Developing the Honda Civic will be a huge challenge, and one that I’m looking forward to," continued the Portuguese racer.
With multiple changes to the technical regulations this year, Tiago believes that... "It will be a fun championship for everyone out on track, but also for the fans. The competition will be very tough and races will be hotly contested, I have no doubt about that at all."
By the beginning of the championship on the 12th and 13th of April in Morocco, Honda and JAS Motorsport have a total of six testing sessions planned. Tiago and Gabriele will therefore have a very busy agenda, both on and off the track, including PR outings in Europe followed by a series of events in Japan.