“After the race, they put you in a room and give you some water and stuff while you wait for the podium, and a few guys from the FIA and David Warren from Allsport [ED: which controlled trackside signage and other commercial activities] came to us and said, ‘Guys, this is a very tricky one. We have a lot of very unhappy fans out there, but we also have some happy fans. So we have to go out there and do the podium, but please don’t get too crazy. Show your faces, but please, no champagne and so on.’

“So we walked out to the podium, calm. They [Schumacher and Barrichello] had cooled it down and were being more serious, and I was going to follow that stance. But then I looked down and saw 30, 40, 50 yellow-dressed Jordan mechanics crying, cheering and all excited. No way could I not enjoy that moment with them. So I let it go, and enjoyed the podium like it was a regular podium – I sprayed the champagne and celebrated with my team.

“Unfortunately I couldn’t celebrate properly with them because for some reason I had a flight booked home for that night. Usually I flew out on the Monday, but for some reason I had a flight booked for that night, so I celebrated in the plane with Jenson Button and Mark Webber.”

Monteiro delivered the team a final payday with a point-scoring finish at Spa later that year, and after one more season in F1 with Midland he moved to the World Touring Car Championship, where he’s now a 12-time race winner. But it’s a third place scored a decade-and-a-half ago that people still ask him about.

“It could have gone in so many other ways,” he says. “But in the end, I have no doubt that this result helped me, in many ways, over the rest of my career. To this day, people from all over the world ask me about it. And every year on the anniversary I receive hundreds of messages, and photos and videos, because I’m the only Portuguese driver who has ever gone onto an F1 podium. For better or for worse, it will stay in the story of Formula 1 forever.”

Monteiro celebrates after “one of the most mentally challenging races I’ve done.” Image by Motorsport Images.

SIDEBAR: Monteiro’s other entry in the F1 record books is even more weird than the 2005 U.S. GP.

Five races after the 2005 United States Grand Prix debacle, the world championship rolled into Istanbul, where Monteiro earned one of the strangest footnotes in Formula 1 history: he appears to be the first F1 driver ever to have been given emergency root canal surgery on a grand prix weekend… by his team boss. Monteiro takes up the story.

“It was a unique situation!” he says. “First of all, not many team principals are doctors or dentists. And second, you don’t hear a lot about drivers getting toothaches like that on race weekends, thank God. It was the only one like that I’ve had in my life, but it happened at the wrong moment and it was a big one. I had a huge abscess. They took me to the hospital, and Colin [Kolles] wanted to come with me. I was like, ‘Oh, no…’, because now, we’re quite good friends, but at the time, we had… some tension. It was a bit of a weird relationship. So I was not looking forward to having him come with me.

“When we get there, the young lady starts to work on me, and she’s actually hurting me. And she’s nervous, because Colin wants to work on me, and she’s saying, ‘No, no, you don’t work here; you cannot do it.’ And we are in Turkey. The hospital was actually quite modern, but still…

“So she didn’t even want him in the room, and he’s, ‘No, no, no, he’s my driver; I’m going to take care of it! I’m a dentist! I have many more years of experience than you!’

“So he stays in the room, and she starts to treat me. And she’s so nervous that she’s shaking, and she’s hurting me, and he’s shouting at her. And I’m lying there thinking, ‘Oh, what the ****…’ So he takes her, puts her out of the room, closes the door, and for me, this is a ****ing nightmare. Can you imagine: Colin Kolles, all red, completely pissed off, he’s just taken the girl out of the room, and he says, ‘Don’t worry, I will take care of you. This is my profession, blah, blah, blah.’ And I’m just, ‘OK, whatever.’

“And it was the smoothest treatment I have ever had. He did the root canal, took the abscess away, and everything was nice and safe. I was so impressed with his work. It was very, very good work that he did. But a very strange story. He saved me that weekend. And I was very surprised that he was so gentle and so good with his hands.”

For Monteiro, the experience was a one-off, but for Kolles, it was a warm-up act. The following season, he performed a similar procedure on Monteiro’s new Midland teammate Christijan Albers before the French Grand Prix.