Felice Jelmini picked up his first career win in the TCR Europe series in a rain-hit second race at Hockenheim, the only driver to gamble on a full set of wet Kumho tyres from the start of the race to go from 11th to first in one lap and secure victory, which he considers payback for the rain scuppering his qualifying session a day before.

Jelmini missed out on his planned run in qualifying as the rain came down mid-session, and as he was the only driver not to have set a lap, he was unable to set a competitive time and qualified down in 12th - elevated to 11th on the grid for Race 2 due to another driver’s grid penalty.

PMA Motorsport and Jelmini’s call to run full wets proved to be inspired, and gave him a comfortable margin come the late race deluge which caused many drivers to career off track and caused the race to finish behind the safety car.

“I’m happy, mainly for the team. In some ways I’m not happy, because I had a big advantage - and I prefer to win races in the same conditions as the others,” said Jelmini.

“We were lucky because we decided on the grid to switch the tyres from slick to rain - I was unlucky in qualifying as even though I was fastest in Q1,  I tried to make a bit of space in Q2 and then on my lap it started raining, so today I had my revenge! 

“On the first lap, I received a big hit from someone and my car was completely bent, so I was lucky.”