Peugeot 308 driver Jimmy Clairet has been stripped of his third place in qualifying at Jarama after his car was deemed to be underweight.
Clairet had finished behind his brother Teddy and pole sitter Mikel Azcona in the session on Friday afternoon, but will now have to start the final pair of races of the season from the back of the grid.
The decision by the stewards means Mat’o Homola is promoted to third for the opening race of the weekend, with Mehdi Bennani, who currently sits second in the championship, moving into fourth for race one.
The news also means another of the championship contenders, John Filippi, is now crucially on reverse grid pole for the second race tomorrow afternoon.
With a change in conditions expected overnight, Clairet had said after qualifying that he was hoping for either a fully wet or fully dry track for the final day of action.
“I know it’s supposed to rain tomorrow, but to be honest I don’t care,” he’d explained.
“I just would like it to be either totally dry or totally wet because it’s better for us than to have conditions somewhere in the middle.”
Both of the Clairet brothers had been near the top of the leaderboard throughout each of the two practices sessions on Friday in Spain, as well as in both parts of qualifying before his exclusion.
“This isn’t the kind of track where you have to work together to make a tow or a slipstream, it’s a little bit dangerous in TCR because the qualifying isn’t so long,” he added.
Jimmy is currently down in 14th in the championship standings with two races this weekend remaining in the 2020 season, and is also 30 points behind brother Teddy, who is 11th.
The first race at Jarama gets underway at 11:20 CEST tomorrow (10:20 BST).