ROB Austin steered his brand new DUO Motorsport with HMS Racing Alfa Romeo Giulietta to a fabulous podium finish on the opening weekend of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship ace season at Brands Hatch on Sunday – taking third place in round three.

Marking an outstanding start to life in the BTCC for the Swindon team’s Alfa, the result sparked emotional celebrations with Austin dedicating the performance to the memory of late team mechanic Shane Stokes, who very tragically lost his life late last year.

Added to a sensational sixth place finish, from 29th on the grid, in the preceding wet-but-drying race, the Evesham driver departed Brands Hatch an impressive fourth in the outright BTCC championship standings.

“It’s for Shane”, said an emotional Austin. “It’s very mixed emotions to be here [on the podium], we miss him a lot – a lot – and this is for him. He’s looking over us and gave us that luck in race two with the reverse grid draw.

“We didn’t have the front tyres to win it, this is the first time we’ve put soft tyres on it, so we’ve still got a huge amount to learn with this car but it’ll come. It’s a great base car, the engineering that’s gone into this is the best I’ve seen on this grid.”

From the outset on Saturday during the two practice sessions, the competitiveness of this year’s championship was underlined with less than a second covering the top 30 cars.

In qualifying later in the day, Austin was just 0.2 seconds shy of the eventual pole time with a lap of 48.289 seconds (90.05mph), meaning 11th on the grid for race one.

Rain throughout the morning on Sunday resulted in a wet track for the opening race of the 2018 season and it wasn’t long before the race fell under safety car conditions.

Austin made a good start and although edged back to 12th, he maintained that position before moving back into 11th prior to the cautionary period on lap three.

Racing resumed on lap seven and although slipping back to 12th, he pressed on. However, contact from Tom Oliphant’s Mercedes led to broken rear suspension and retirement for the Alfa.

Austin had a mountain to climb in round two from 29th on the grid, but with the track surface starting to dry, the choice was taken to gamble on slick tyres.

Holding position initially, racing then fell under safety car conditions for several laps before the action resumed on the sixth tour. Austin was 28th at that point but by lap 10, the slick-shod cars began to come into their own on an increasingly dry racing line.

By lap 13, Austin had posted the fastest lap of the race and after breaking into the top 20 on lap 19 he gained no fewer than five places the next time around. With just seven laps to go, he had closed to within 10 seconds of the lead.

By the end of lap 22, the Alfa was ninth and Austin then took eighth the next time around before leaping into the top six where he stayed to the flag.

Post-race the draw was made for the partially reversed grid for round three, and Austin was awarded pole position for the weekend’s finale.

Making a fantastic launch from the head of the grid, Austin powered into a healthy lead of almost a second before the safety car was deployed on lap two.

When racing resumed at the beginning of the sixth tour, Austin maintained his lead, but at the halfway point, he was edged back to second.

Into the penultimate lap the Alfa and Mercedes of Adam Morgan went side-by-side over the line, with Morgan edging ahead. Austin tried to fight back, but wisely settled for third and a magnificent podium result on the debut weekend for the Giulietta.

DUO Motorsport with HMS Racing team principal Simon Belcher added: “I’m obviously super proud of the whole team, everyone has done an incredible job.

“To see Rob on the podium on our first weekend with a brand new car, which only had three days of running prior to coming to Brands, is more than we could have dreamed of.

"We’re all thinking of Shane, who is so dearly missed. This result is for him, he’ll always be a part of whatever DUO Motorsport with HMS Racing achieves.”