Santiago Concepción put on his star performance of the season at his home race and the season finale of the TCR Europe series at Valencia, bouncing back from two bad starts to finish fourth and fifth in the two races, and stopping Ignacio Montenegro’s perfect run of victories in the rookies' championship.

With a sluggish Race 1 start, and then a complete stall in Race 2 dropping him to the back of the pack, coming back to finish fourth and fifth, going door-to-door with title fighters Aurélien Comte and Franco Girolami was a remarkable comeback, and the Spanish racer says if he hadn’t stalled in Race 2, overall victory was there for the taking.

“I’ve finally got the feeling of the car, which is the most difficult thing I’ve been trying to get all season,” said Concepción. “At the start of Race 1 I made a really bad start and I was in seventh into Turn 1 - I finished in fourth and I’m very happy to be fighting with the big icons of the championship.

“In Race 2 my start was a mess. The car turned off as I put too much clutch on, so I was 15th and the only thing I could do was try to recover. So starting seventh, falling to 15th, and recovering ten positions to fifth, and to be the first rookie, I’m very happy with that. If I hadn’t made the mistake at the start, a win was definitely there.”