EVESHAM'S Rob Austin saved the best for last during the final weekend of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship season at Brands Hatch.

He drove to third place for DUO Motorsport with HMS Racing and secured the first Independents Trophy class win for the squad’s Alfa Romeo Giulietta.

It was a long overdue return to the podium for the first time since the opening event of 2018 at the Kent venue’s shorter Indy Circuit and he finished 14th in the overall standings on 126 points.

Austin made an outstanding start from second on the grid in round 30 to surge into an early lead.

Battling hard throughout, Austin finished the 15-lap season finale in third just 0.7 seconds adrift of race winner Ashley Sutton and second-placed Josh Cook from Bidford's Power Maxed Racing on the sprint to the line.

“It’s nice to end the season with a podium but if I’m honest I really wanted that win!”, reflected Austin.

“We didn’t manage to hook the car up quite as well as we did at Silverstone which meant I was struggling with the front end washing out on power, leaving me defenceless when Cook got under me exiting Clearways and there was no way I could fight Sutton’s Subaru like Cook did.

“There is still a lot of development work to be done on the Alfa, it’s a process that I definitely underestimated coming in to this year, but the potential in it is unquestionable and the DUO Motorsport with HMS Racing guys have done an amazing job.”

Austin was 15th in the first race and ninth in the second contest.

He finished seventh in the independents trophy championship with his outfit ninth in the independents team standings.

Power Maxed Racing's Senna Proctor was fifth and got two sevenths at Brands Hatch with Cook claiming 10th alongside his runner-up spot.

Cook finished sixth in the championship on 246 points while Proctor was 12th on 170.

Colin Turkington and Team BMW secured the overall BTCC title on 304 points from Tom Ingram on 292 and Tom Chilton on 266.