Rising star Harry King brought the curtain down on his third full season in the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup with a sixth podium finish of the campaign at Monza, enabling him to wrap up second in the championship standings.

The BWT Lechner Racing driver went into the season finale as one of two drivers still in contention for overall honours, although a 20 point deficit to Larry ten Voorde meant Harry had to win in order to stand any chance of preventing the Dutch racer from lifting the crown for a third time.

The final weekend of racing in Italy kicked off in positive fashion for Harry as he set the second quickest time in free practice, bettered by Alessandro Ghiretti but well clear of ten Voorde who found himself back in ninth.

As had been the case in the previous meeting at Zandvoort, Saturday’s qualifying session would prove to be vital and ended with the top six drivers on the grid covered by less than a tenth of a second.

Having been unlucky with traffic during the session, Harry would end up in P5 despite his time of 1:48.596 being three-tenths of a second quicker than his pole lap twelve months earlier, leaving the 23-year-old with work to do on race day in his quest to secure a maiden Supercup title.

Getting away from the line well at the start, Harry was able to come through the tricky Prima Variante unscathed having moved ahead of Alex Tauscher and settled into fourth behind team-mate Robert de Haan following an early caution to recover the car of Ariel Levi from the gravel.

After another brief caution period, Harry saw his chance to move into the podium positions when he got a run on de Haan going into turn one and took the outside line into turn one to ensure he was able to sneak up the inside of the Dutchman into the second part of the chicane to get ahead.

With the two caution periods meaning that the race would ultimately run to time, Harry was unable to launch a bid to get ahead of ten Voorde into second place although third still ensured he ended the season with an impressive record of six podiums from eight starts, with the 145 points scored being a new personal best.

“Coming into the weekend, there was no real pressure on my shoulders and the title was Larry’s to lose,” he said. “Having won from pole last season, my goal was to try and replicate that result and then see what happened. Ultimately things were decided in qualifying, which was ridiculously close, and I feel I did well in the race to come through to third place.

“Although my aim this season was to win the title, I’m still extremely proud to have finished the year in second place, and with my record of six podiums from eight starts in such a competitive series. The obvious highlight would be the win in Budapest but we’ve shown strong pace throughout the campaign and can be happy with the job we’ve done on track.”