Honda driver Tiago Monteiro has been ruled out of competing in the WTCC at this weekend’s race at Motegi on medical advice. It’ll be the second race in a row that Monteiro has missed, following his testing crash in Barcelona at the start of September.

The former championship leader was forced to miss last weekend’s race at Ningbo in China, although with chief rival Thed Björk crashing out in the first race in his Polestar Volvo, and with only half-points awarded for the aborted second race, the Portuguese driver only fell half a point behind the Swede in the standings.

However, the 41-year-old has again been ruled out of this weekend’s race at Honda’s home event at Motegi in Japan. The team have not yet confirmed his replacement. Gabriele Tarquini stood in last time in China, but is unavailable this weekend due to clashing commitments in the TCR European Trophy with Hyundai.

“This is one of the most disappointing moments of my career,” said Monteiro. “As a team, we’ve worked so hard to get ourselves into a championship-winning position, and to see it slipping away like this is very tough to deal with.

“The most frustrating thing is that the recovery is actually going very well; it’s just that time is against me, but all of these things are motivating me to come back even stronger when the time is right. I have to thank the incredible medical team that are working with me every day – we share a common goal to return to racing as soon as possible – and everybody who has sent me kind messages of support through this difficult time.”

After this weekend, there’s a three-week gap to the penultimate round of the season, the Guia Race of Macau, which Monteiro won last year when the final round of the TCR International Series took place.

Monteiro is continuing to work towards returning to the race seat for the final two rounds of the season.