The driver who gained most from F1's famous farce

Formula 1's 999 previous world championship grands prix have produced plenty of underdog shocks. Whether it's Ivan Capelli's giantkilling efforts in France for Leyton House or Damon Hill's Hungary heartbreak with Arrows, those overachievements are some of the most fondly remembered moments - particularly in an age where F1's big three teams are so dominant.

The current stranglehold is alarming; only two of the 129 podium positions on offer since F1's last major regulations overhaul for 2017 have been scored by a driver outside the ranks of Mercedes, Ferrari or Red Bull - a situation F1's sporting boss Ross Brawn called "unacceptable".

And even when the seal on the top three has been broken, there's a predictability about it - four of the last five surprise podiums came on street circuits, three of which were scored opportunistically by Sergio Perez in Monaco (2016) and two in Baku (2016 and '18).

What's more, Force India and Williams - with which Lance Stroll finished third in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in 2017 - were properly established midfield teams; some way off the top three, but well-placed to benefit if frontrunners hit trouble (as was the case in Baku for both teams).

Force India might be considered the last real underdog to have scored a podium, but the team was a genuine contender on pace when Giancarlo Fisichella finished runner-up in the 2009 Belgian GP (the Italian had started on pole, after all, albeit in an incredibly wide open season).

So the last top-three result scored by a true no-hoper? You have to go back through the previous three iterations of that team to 2005.

But not in keeping with most of F1's underdog successes, it was one of - if not the - least popular podiums ever.

In the year of one set of tyres being made to last qualifying and the race, both Bridgestone and Michelin faced difficulties in 2005. But at Indianapolis, concerns about the safety of Michelin's compound through the banked Turn 13 reached an event horizon, resulting in all 14 of the company's runners withdrawing after the formation lap and leaving six Bridgestone-shod cars - the Ferraris of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello, Tiago Monteiro and Jordan team-mate Narain Karthikeyan, and Minardi pair Christijan Albers and Patrick Friesacher - to contest the 73-lap race.

This story is well-worn (if you'll pardon the expression). Faux-forgotten, perhaps consciously, but infamous: a debacle, shambolic, farcical. Call the race what you will, this piece seeks not to pore over the minutiae of what caused one of F1's most controversial races, but instead to document it from the point of view of third-place finisher Monteiro - the one person who was likely happier than all others at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on June 19 2005.

Results were, unsurprisingly, not forthcoming for a team now firmly in F1's backmarker bracket

That season was one of change for Jordan. Monteiro had agreed a deal with founder, Eddie Jordan, but the squad was under new ownership come January when it was bought by Alex Shnaider and the Midland Group that would take the Jordan team's place the following year, with Trevor Carlin installed as sporting director and Colin Kolles as team boss. The team was also without an engine supplier at the start of the year when Ford decided to sell Cosworth, until Toyota offered a lifeline.

"Formula 1 is Formula 1; no matter how you get there, what you do there, whether the experience is good or bad, it is amazing," says Monteiro, who was runner-up with Carlin's team in World Series by Nissan in 2004 before graduating to F1. "There's a lot of great things, there are bad things about Formula 1, but it is unusual and different from any kind of competition you might do.

"It was a big transition for Jordan. I signed with Eddie Jordan, and maybe two or three months later it had been bought. Collin Kolles was already kind of there, and he actually is the one who contacted me initially, but these transitions are never good for a team because people at a higher level are more focused on the business side of things. So they're not really thinking on investing and development or whatever.

"We still had a good momentum from the previous years - maybe not the best, but it was still decent. So that transition and evolution was still there, although we felt the level of commitment and investment from the team was not the same as it used to be.

"I just wanted to learn as much as possible and start my career in F1. So you're there, you know all these things, but you don't care - you just want to drive and do the best you can."

Results were, unsurprisingly, not forthcoming for a team now firmly in F1's backmarker bracket, having finished ninth in the constructors' championship the previous two years. Jordan's 2005 season reached something of a nadir when Carlin left prior to the Canadian Grand Prix weekend, but Monteiro's car was reliable all the while and come the start of the European season he appeared to have the measure of Karthikeyan.

Then came the Indianapolis weekend.

Alarm bells were first set ringing when Ralf Schumacher's Toyota suffered a tyre failure heading into the final corner in second practice, ruling the German out of the race for a second year running. Michelin's attempts to find a cause were to no avail, and of the non-Bridgestone runners only Juan Pablo Montoya and David Coulthard set times in Saturday morning's practice session. Jordan sensed an opportunity.

"A lot of things were happening that weekend, and we did have many, many more briefings [than usual] and our team boss [Adrian Burgess and Kolles] at the time had also a lot of meetings," recalls Monteiro. "There was this crash from Ralf and many other issues - a lot of concern from Michelin about the tyre compound and the resistance of the tyre in this high-speed corner with banking.

"They were right, it's a security issue, I understand that. But then again we had so many problems during the season with Bridgestone, with tyres delaminating, not resisting the whole race, having to change more tyres than usual. But thank God there was not maybe a huge crash because of that, so it didn't mark so much people's minds and people don't remember about that. But we did struggle, Ferrari struggled many times.

"We didn't complain as much and we tried to work with Bridgestone to make it better. Michelin and the teams there, I think they used the opportunity of the crash to try to solve that problem. There was a genuine worry about the security, of course, but I think there was also a little bit [of] an opportunity to try and say, 'OK, there is this big crash, we don't want it to happen again' and we use that.

"They were talking about so many weird things that were obviously unusual. And obviously the Michelin people were getting together and talking about it, but there was nobody from Bridgestone so we didn't know exactly what was going to happen.

"We knew there was going to be an opportunity to score some points. We were not thinking about podiums or anything like that, but we thought if some of them stop, then we can maybe make some good points. So the message to us was, 'Guys, this is the race where you have to finish, you have to be clever about it, if you're following a Michelin car be careful he doesn't crash. But this is an opportunity for us to be in the points'.

"And as soon as we arrived to the last corner, we started seeing everybody come into the pits one-by-one" Tiago Monteiro

"But it was so weird. Every 15 minutes it was changing; they even talked about cancelling the whole race, the whole event."

Michelin had got its calculations wrong. Attempts to find a solution to allow all cars to race - the most notable of which was a proposal to add a chicane at the final corner, but also included shortening the race, limiting speeds through the corner, and even making cars come through the pits every lap - kept failing, despite continued efforts to reach an agreement.

The Michelin runners' universal return to the pitlane after the formation lap on Sunday had appeared the most likely course of action, but even then it still wasn't fully clear what was going to happen - with the likes of Red Bull's Coulthard expressing a desire to race.

"We knew about this possibility, so the engineer told me, 'Whatever happens - there might be some cars that pull off, either before the start - you take your grid position, even if there is a hole in front of you. If a car doesn't start, be careful, if they stop in front of you and they take the start, be careful'," recalls Monteiro.

"But there were still so many possible outcomes. So I just did my regular warm-up, and I remember very well that some cars were not weaving, so I thought 'this guy is not starting', but some cars in front of me were actually weaving and preparing themselves, so I told the radio, 'Some guys are really preparing themselves to start', and they said, 'Don't worry, just do your thing, settle in your grid box and go for it'.

"And as soon as we arrived to the last corner, we started seeing everybody come into the pits one-by-one. I think the radio message came in like, 'This one's coming into the pits - oh, this one as well, this one as well; they're all coming into the pits!' I said, 'Yeah, I can see that, what do I do?' 'Stay on the grid, stay in your position'.

"So it was still our position, and there was the two Minardis and my team-mate behind and then the two Ferraris a long way down. It was a big, big gap, and now I was like, 'Oh my god, this is a huge thing'."

Minardi team boss Paul Stoddart said at the time that Jordan's decision to race went against an agreement, but Monteiro insists it was "definitely" going to happen because "we struggled through the bad times with Bridgestone, so why should we not race?". Monteiro started a de facto third - a position that he held off the line.

"I did a good start, and after that it was really hard, but I needed to just focus on driving and go for it, and not think about anything else. I didn't want to be under pressure, I wanted to get away from them and forget about it. And then in Formula 1 you're doing one hour and 45 minutes, just pushing as much as you can.

"At halfway I was maybe 20 seconds in front [of fourth], and my engineer tells me to cool down because the gearbox temperature was a bit high and I had a big margin. I'm like, 'No, I can't cool down', because I didn't want to make a mistake. I didn't want them to catch me, to put me under pressure, and I didn't want to make a mistake by just losing focus.

"So I kept going, pushing like crazy until the last 10 laps. And then, those were the longest and hardest 10 laps of my life. Because then you start to think, 'Fuck, I'm actually P3'. They were quite far [behind], and I lifted off a bit - maybe a few tenths per lap - and then you start to listen to a lot of noises. The gearbox feels weird, the braking feels weird, and you start imagining things and making up weird feelings in your head, and you still have 10 laps to go."

But there were no gremlins. Monteiro finished a lap down on the leading Ferraris - which almost came together after their second round of pitstops - but half a minute up on team-mate Karthikeyan, to score Jordan Grand Prix's final podium (even though the team had changed hands by then) more than two years after Fisichella's Brazilian GP win. In so doing, Monteiro became the first, and so far only, Portuguese driver to stand on an F1 podium.

Boos had rung out over the screech of the V10 engines on the formation lap, and race winner Schumacher, runner-up Barrichello and Monteiro were told before the podium by David Warren of Allsport Management to tone down any celebrations.

"OK, I was into that, because first of all it was my first time on a Formula 1 podium, I was going to follow the rules," says Monteiro. "And we get to the podium, and when I get there I see a proper wave of yellow people - all the mechanics, everybody was in yellow at Jordan - and they were crying and shouting and throwing things.

"I never heard booing or anything like that. You can see videos where people are booing, but probably they were near the microphones! I got to the podium and then I see Michael and Rubens who were quite serious, and was like, 'Fuck it, I'm not having that'. I see everybody celebrating and thought, "I'll celebrate as well'.

"It was our opportunity, and again at that time I really thought, 'Fuck, we struggled so much with our tyres, and we still went on, so why should we now not celebrate?'

"But especially I couldn't not celebrate in respect for my mechanics that worked so hard, and for sure we would not have another opportunity like that. That's what I said later on - I didn't steal anything from anybody; I was there, I did my job.

"It was a weird weekend, it was unfortunate what happened, but I was there to do a race, my boss ordered me to do the race and that's what I did. We took the opportunity."

And yet it wasn't the most notable result of Monteiro's season. That instead came in a wet Belgian GP, where he beat Christian Klien's Red Bull and the Sauber of Felipe Massa to eighth place - the only other points finish any of F1's 'back four' of 2005 managed away from at Indianapolis.

Monteiro went on to drive for Midland in 2006 and, after missing out on a seat with the Spyker team that replaced it, came close to an agreement for '07 with Toro Rosso - which "didn't even want to hear about the podium. They were more interested in my performance in Spa where I finished eighth with everybody around".

He ultimately never signed that Toro Rosso deal, and instead joined the World Touring Car Championship for 2007 - a series in which he remains today, with Honda, following its transition to WTCR.

Judging by the reaction of the crowd on that day in 2005, Toro Rosso weren't the only ones who didn't want to hear about that podium. But that matters little to Monteiro, who has his name to what, come Sunday, is likely to remain the most bizarre third-place finish in F1's 1000-race history.