Monteiro: Missing race was painful.

CART Champ Car rookie Tiago Monteiro has revealed that sitting out last Saturday's Cleveland night race was almost as painful as the knock he took in practice that ruled him out of the action.

After crashing into a tyre wall during the raceday warm-up, the Fittipaldi-Dingman Racing driver was sidelined by CART doctors as a precautionary measure to prevent him endangering wither himself of his rivals due to delayed reactions to the shunt. The Portuguese racer was taken to the on-site CART medical centre following the accident, before being transferred to nearby Metro Heath Hospital for a CT scan. Although Monteiro claimed to feel fine, and his CT scan was clear, he failed the recently implemented test used by the NFL and US Air Force to measure reaction times after a head trauma, and the CART doctors felt it best if he missed the race rather than risk the possibility of further injury.

While the driver and team were obviously disappointed, the advice of motorsport's best medical team simply could not be ignored, and Monteiro's distinctive orange-and-blue car was withdrawn from the event.

"It was an eventful weekend and, obviously, this is a shame," Monteiro admitted during the race, "To not be able to start was painful - the crew put the car back together and we were ready to go, so that makes it harder to accept.

"However, the CART doctors know what they're doing so, if they say it's better for my health to sit this one out, then it's better. We were ready to go and sitting in the car, but it's better to miss this one race than to take a chance and possibly miss the rest of the season.

"Dr Olvey said that it shouldn't take very long for me to get back - maybe hours, maybe [a couple of] days - and, if [the accident] had happened yesterday, I think there's a 90 per cent chance that I would have been okay for the race today. We'll do another [medical] test on Tuesday or Wednesday, but it shouldn't be a problem. We'll get our revenge in Toronto."

The team headed back to Indianapolis after the Cleveland race to finalise preparations before moving to this weekend's Toronto Molson Indy. Monteiro, team co-owner Emerson Fittipaldi and engineer Don Bricker are all confident that they'll have the car necessary to finish in points on the 1.755-mile street circuit, and now just look forward to hearing that the driver is up to the rigours of racing.