Rising star Harry King strengthened his position inside the top two of the Porsche Carrera Cup Deutschland standings with a hard-fought podium finish at the Lausitzring.

Harry went into the weekend on the back of an impressive podium finish at the Nürburgring, which marked the fifth time in eight races this season that he had come away from a meeting in the German series with a trophy to his name.

Having shown solid pace across pre-event testing, Harry put his Allied-Racing-run car fourth on the grid for the opening racing in a qualifying session that saw the top four cars covered by just a tenth of a second, with his second quickest lap meaning he would start race two from the same position.

A strong start to race one saw Harry jump up into third as the field funnelled down to turn one for the first time, with the safety car then deployed to recover a stricken car from the gravel.

Racing resumed with just over 20 minutes left on the clock, with Harry holding position until he was forced wide at the hairpin - resulting in a loss of momentum that dropped him back to sixth place.

Fighting hard to recover lost ground, Harry quickly reclaimed fifth from Harri Jones before chasing down Morris Schuring - putting in a series of fast laps as he closed in on his rival ahead.

Despite his car carrying damage from the earlier contact, Harry set the fastest lap of the race as he got ahead of Schuring and was running in P4 when the race went back under caution and ultimately finished behind the safety car after another incident.

Retaining fourth place at the start of race two, Harry saw off the early challenge of Huub van Eijndhoven before the safety car made another appearance after a lap one incident.

On the restart, contact between team-mates Loek Hartog and Larry Ten Voorde ahead provided Harry with the chance to jump up into second spot behind Buus, and he would hold position throughout the remainder of the action despite constant pressure from Ten Voorde behind.

Following the weekend, Harry remains second in the standings with an extended advantage over the chasing pack behind, with three rounds of the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup now taking place across the next two weekends before he returns to action in the German series at the Sachsenring.

"Overall it’s been a positive weekend as we have been able to strengthen our championship position, which was the main aim," he said. "Race one started well and we got up into third place before contact dropped me down the order, but our pace was clear as we battled back through to fourth at the finish and scored the fastest lap.

"Although that result was lower than I was aiming for, we were able to make up for it in race two after a race-long battle with Larry, who didn’t give me any time to relax. There was a huge amount of pressure throughout, and I had to keep it clean and avoid any mistakes in order to secure the result.

"This weekend kicks off another busy spell of racing, with the next few weekends being vitally important for my title challenge across multiple championships."