Jolyon Palmer opened his 2014 GP2 account with third place in the season opening Bahrain feature race, on his debut for the DAMS team.

A slow get away from pole position dropped Jolyon to seventh at the first corner, but he immediately dispatched former team mate Felipe Nasr to run in sixth at the end of lap one.

Palmer then set his sights on the Caterham of Rio Haryanto ahead, but the race was neutralised behind the safety car after a clash between Axcil Jeffries and Kimiya Sato on the run down to turn four on lap three.

The safety car pitted at the end of lap six and several runners in front opted to pit, elevating Jolyon to third. Jolyon then pitted at the end of lap seven, and emerged ahead of Mitch Evans and crucially ahead of Haryanto who he has been battling with before the safety car, after an excellent tactical decision from the DAMS team.

Jolyon, now running in a net second position, set about challenging newcomer Stoffel Vandoorne in front who had pitted two laps later than the Briton. Jolyon set the fastest lap of the race at that point on lap 10 and started closing on the Belgian ART GP driver.

The race settled down in the mid stages, with Jolyon lapping on the same pace as Vandoorne with a two second cushion between the pair. Jolyon closed the gap to 1.5 seconds at the end of lap 22, with the gap narrowing to 1.3 seconds on lap 23.

But Vandoorne's fresher tyres meant he was able to stretch a gap in the final stages, leaving Jolyon to fight for his second position. On lap 30 however, Carlin driver Julian Leal was able to edge past Jolyon at turn one, leaving the Briton to settle for third place, fending off late race pressure from Stefano Coletti.

Speaking on the podium after the race, Jolyon commented: "The start was a big mess and a bit of finger trouble from my point of view. We've been trying new procedures and it didn't really work at all.

"It's difficult when you go from first down to sixth or seventh to compose yourself and come back, and it's something which happened when I was on pole in Singapore last year. We had a good strategy though and the team did a really good pit stop and we managed to jump up to second, but at the end it was really tough with the rear tyres and if there had been a few more laps we may have dropped back a bit more."

The result leaves Jolyon in second place in the drivers' standings with 21 points, having also secured points for pole position and also for fastest race lap of those drivers finishing inside the top-10.

Bahrain GP2 Feature Race result:

1. S Vandoorne, ART GP, 32 laps
2. J Leal, Carlin, +1.5s
3. J Palmer, DAMS, +5.8s
4. S Coletti, Racing Engineering, +6.3s
5. A Pic, Campos, +15.1s
6. T Izawa, ART GP, +21.7s
7. S Trummer, Rapax, +21.9s
8. F Nasr, Carlin, +24.4s
9. R Binder, Arden, +24.8s
10. A Quaife-Hobbs, Rapax, +26.1s

The GP2 Sprint Race in Bahrain starts at 12.15pm UK time tomorrow (Sunday), with full coverage available on Jolyon's website www.jolyonpalmer.com.