Felipe Fernández secured his career-best finish in the TCR Europe series with second place at Portimão, as well as securing victory and the lead of the Diamond Trophy category after an impressive start.

Despite being well-placed after qualifying in fifth for Race 1, Fernández lost ground in the incident between Eric Gené and Felice Jelmini at Turn 4 and ended up battling in the midfield, while in Race 2 he launched from sixth to third, soon passing Max Hart’s Hyundai for second to record his best result since he finished third at Spa-Francorchamps last year.

“Yesterday we had an amazing opportunity but we had the incident in front of Jelmini and Gené, so I was avoiding the incident and went off track and lost all those positions, and my race was effectively over,” said Fernández.

“Today, I made a really good start, passing two cars at the start and one more later that lap - then ahead of me was Brickley, we both had great pace, and then it was a quiet race. I was trying to save my tyres, but then when I pushed on the last few laps, he was also clearly saving his tyres and also had more pace in hand.”

The next round of the championship is at Spa-Francorchamps, where he scored his first pole position last year.