Carl Breeze demonstrated a championship-winning mentality with a storming comeback drive in the opening Ginetta Supercup GT4 race at Croft in North Yorkshire.
The King's Lynn racer and series leader was stuck at the back of the grid for the opening race, having suffered a broken driveshaft during qualifying, while HHC Motorsport team-mate and title rival Jamie Orton was occupying grid four.
A demon opening lap saw Breeze cut his way through the lower order to be fifth, which he quickly turned into fourth place before closing in on rival Orton, who proved an obstacle to any further progress.
However the local racer did take the extra point for fastest lap.
In the early laps of race two, Orton and Breeze were hounding Newmarket racer Michael Caine for his second place, with the former tipping the Suffolk racer into a spin for which he was penalised back to seventh place post-race.
This left Breeze, in the Bluechip-supported car, to fend off the repeated attacks of former Attenborough resident Ollie Jackson to secure the points for second place, with Jackson's third place his best result of the season.
Breeze's podium visit was the local racer's 150th time he has stood on the British Touring Car Championship support series rostrum, which no other driver has come close to emulating.
Race three saw the local racer post his first retirement of the season, which matches title rivals Orton and Tom Oliphant who are 22 and 36 points in arrears of Breeze respectively.
With two dropped scores across the whole season, all three can only afford one more slip as the series takes a mid-season break before resuming at Breeze's home circuit of Snetterton in early August, in which he has ruled supreme in recent years.
It was a terrible weekend for Dereham's Dan Zelos, who could only score two points for 19th place in race two as the Ginetta Junior series leader, Jamie Caroline, was able to secure a massive 71.
After a difficult start to his campaign the Norfolk school boy had started to close in on Caroline's lead, but the Croft rounds at the weekend have given him a mountain to climb.
Qualifying saw the Evergreen Tyres-supported racer way off the leading pace in 19th place, and things got no better in the opening race with Zelos retiring out of 18th on the fourth lap.
'Struggled for power and pace and then got taken out before being collected in another driver's accident,' remarked Zelos.
'A lot of damage to the car so we'll all need to work hard tonight to make sure we can make the second race.'
Starting race two from the last row was going to prove difficult with Zelos making it up to 19th place on the opening lap, before becoming mired in battles for minor placings.
'Unfortunately today didn't get any better,' said a bitterly disappointed Zelos of Sunday's race.
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