Alex Lynn’s love affair with the Red Bull Ring – that started last year in GP3 – continued into this year’s GP2 Series as he sealed a podium finish in the feature race in Austria.

The 21-year-old racing driver from Dunmow won at the circuit in Spielberg on his way to taking the GP3 title last year and drove a superb race at the higher level to move up to fourth in the overall standings.

Lynn, who is development driver for the Williams Martini Racing Formula One team, was looking to bounce back from the disappointment of not gaining any points from the previous round of the GP2 Series in Monaco.

He said he had spent the intervening four weeks between that and his trip to Austria by working hard with his DAMS Racing team to improve the way they operated during races.

And it clearly worked in the opening feature race at the Red Bull Ring.

It hadn’t been the qualifying display that he was hoping for as he could only take ninth place on the grid, but Lynn and his team got their race plan executed brilliantly.

While other drivers opted to make an early pit stop after starting on the option tyre and then moving on to the more durable prime, the Essex man flipped that strategy on its head.

Starting on the prime tyre, Lynn drove 31 laps into the 40-lap race and did and great job of managing his Pirelli rubber as he was still pulling out fast times when he pulled into the pits.

He had been leading at that point and emerged right in the middle of a battle for third place, knowing that a podium finish was there for the taking.

Lynn knew that a switch to the faster, but quicker degrading, option tyre would hold him in good stead to achieve that and he quickly passed Racing Engineering’s Alexander Rossi.

With his tyres giving him an advantage, Nobuharu Matsushita was rapidly in his sights and Lynn pulled a classy move at the third turn to get past the Japanese driver and into the top three.

Second-placed Rappax’s Sergey Sirotkin and leader Stoffel Vandoorne of ART Racing, were too far down the track for the DAMS driver to pull back any further places.

However, he did set the fastest lap of the race in the closing stages as he hunted down Matsushita and his third place, which was his highest finish so far in a GP2 Series feature race, was a great return from his starting position.

At the end, Lynn said to his engineers over the team radio: “Well done guys, I think we did that one the hard way.”