Ruben Volt took his seventh win in TCR Europe in style, pitting and dropping all the way to 20th place behind the safety car, before scything through the field to victory in his ALM Motorsport Honda Civic Type R FL5 TCR.

Volt made a strong start, but was caught up in the first corner incident between the two Monlau Motorsport CUPRAs of Marco Butti and Adam Shepherd and fell to the back of the top ten.

With the safety car called on the first lap with Victor Fernández’s Honda stuck in the wall at Bruxelles, and the rain starting to fall more heavily, Volt was the first driver to make the switch to full wet tyres.

“Everyone at the front decided to start on full slicks, including me. But I had a horrific start, I got boxed in at Turn 1 and had some wheel damage, and I was just hanging on,” said Volt. “The safety car fortunately came out so we decided to come in for full wets. The first four laps we were almost seven seconds quicker than everybody else, but in the last two laps the front tyres were starting to go so I’m glad there weren’t any more laps.

On the call to pit, Volt explained it was the team that called him in. While Monlau Motorsport’s Viktor Andersson came in at the same time, the CUPRA driver opted for a mixed slicks and wets combination, but it was soon clear that full wets were the way to go, with Volt’s team-mate Max Hart following suit a lap later.

”We discussed the option before the race, and said if there was a safety car we’d box. When it didn’t seem to stop raining, Martin (Laur, team principal) screamed in my ear to stop now, and we boxed and put full wets on and cruised away from there.”