A fantastic fightback drive from Jolyon Palmer saw the Carlin driver surge from 20th on the grid to claim sixth place in today's (Saturday 29 June) GP2 Feature Race at Silverstone.

In front of his home crowd, Jolyon produced his customary excellent start to claim five places on the opening lap.

He then gained another position on the second lap with a strong move on Nathanael Berthon at The Loop, and then made up a further two positions on the fourth lap by passing Julian Leal and Johnny Cecotto to move up to 12th.

As the pit stop phase kicked in, Jolyon was running as high as fourth, taking advantage of pit stoppers and a brilliant last ditch overtaking move on Rio Haryanto at Brooklands on lap seven.

Jolyon pitted on lap nine and resumed the race in 13th. As further runners pitted in front, Jolyon was soon back in the top 10, and improved further with overtaking moves on team mate Felipe Nasr and Johnny Cecotto to move into seventh by lap 17.

By the end of the pit stop window, Jolyon was up to fifth, and firmly involved in the fight for the final podium position with Stephane Richelmi, Stefano Coletti and Fabio Leimer, with the four drivers following each other very closely.

Jolyon was passed by Tom Dillmann on fresher rubber on lap 21, but was still firmly involved in the chase for the podium until being passed by Jon Lancaster with two laps remaining. Running seventh on the last lap, Jolyon was promoted to sixth when Leimer and Coletti collided.

Finishing sixth means Jolyon will start tomorrow's sprint race at Silverstone from third place on the grid, with the race starting at 9.35am. His result lifts him to seventh in the drivers' championship standings, and also gives his Carlin team the lead in the teams' championship.

Speaking afterwards Jolyon enthused: "I had a decent start and a mega first few laps passing a lot of people. After the stops I was up into sixth, I passed Nasr and then was chasing Leimer in the battle for a podium. In the end I hurt my tyres too much following Leimer and lost a place but ended up sixth. I'm very happy to have produced another good recovery drive and we are in a very strong position for tomorrow."

GP2 Silverstone Feature Race Result

1. S Bird, RUSSIAN TIME, 29 laps
2. S Richelmi, DAMS, +2.4s
3. T Dillmann, RUSSIAN TIME, +12.0s
4. F Leimer, Racing Engineering, +13.8s
5. J Lancaster, Hilmer Motorsport, +14.7s
6. J Palmer, Carlin, +18.7s
7. R Haryanto, Barwa Addax, +19.7s
8. J Leal, Racing Engineering, +20.3s
9. J Calado, ART Grand Prix, +26.6s
10. A Rossi, Caterham, +30.3s

Full coverage of the GP2 sprint race at Silverstone, including live timing, will be available on Jolyon's official website www.jolyonpalmer.com , while TV coverage of all sessions will be available on Sky F1's HD Channel.