A weekend full of frustration can't be forgotten quickly enough by Andreas Wirth. source: Andreas Wirth Racing After a challenging weekend with less than stellar results in practice and qualifying, Wirth started the Tecate Grand Prix of Monterrey from tenth and was seemingly satisfied with his sixth place finish. Going into the weekend, Wirth was confident he could change his luck on one of the tracks that's proved more of a challenge to him. "The track is nice. I like it. It was just an unfortunate weekend last year. We made a mistake with my tyres and I tried to push too hard and spun. I'm more experienced now, so I'm not worried at all. My second worst result from last year in Monterrey just gives me more motivation to win this year! Unfortunately for Andreas, 2006 didn't bring about dramatic changes, and Monterrey will continue to hold its disappointments. "We had a really tough weekend" explained Wirth, "We struggled a little bit and went the wrong way with our set up on Friday. On Saturday morning we wanted to try something, but my throttle cable broke, so we didn't have the 45-minutes practice because it broke on the 6 th lap of the session. So we ended up working the wrong way, which didn't really help us." Coming out of qualifying Wirth noted, "If we could get a top five finish out of this weekend it would feel like a win!" In a clean 32-lap race without a single caution, Wirth managed to gain three spots in the first lap, improving from 10th to 7th. On lap 11, he made one final pass in turn five when he went wheel-to-wheel with Matos to take 6 th place. Although the car clearly wasn't optimal, Wirth managed to stay close to the front runners, and remarked, "We made a lot of changes for the race on the car, which was the right way, but still, you know, we couldn't improve that set up because we couldn't work with it. We had a terrible weekend, but at least today the car was more competitive. I started from p.10 and ended up p.6 - it was the maximum I could do this weekend. I'm still leading by 5 points now so I'm not really worried because I know now my tracks are coming. Monterrey was the only one I was concerned about. We should be good for the next races and the rest of the season. I quite like the Portland track, it's one of my favourites so it will be a good place for the team to get back to where we should be. And of course, I still want to thank my team and the engineers because they never gave up this weekend -- we win and loose together."
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