When Liam Lawson popped the cork of the champagne on Sunday, he broke a significant duct for both himself and his team by achieving their first podium of the season. While technically too young to drink the bubbly he cracked open, we can’t imagine too many would have denied the likeable Kiwi his first sip.

In the aftermath of his third place finish, the 17-year-old revealed that his MP Motorsport team had made “big changes” ahead of Round 4, which brought an improved performance from the car.

I’m very happy,” he elated. “It has been a really tough start for us this year, which was a bit puzzling really because we had a really strong pre-season, so we were expecting more from the start I guess, but it just wasn’t there.

“The outright pace wasn’t there - race pace wasn’t too bad, but we had a lot to work on. We made some big changes this weekend before practice and qualy and we did a slightly different strategy in qualy to everyone else, which ended up putting us out on track by ourselves, which was quite nice.

“Qualy was strong for us, P7 was our best qualy yet and then Saturday’s race was okay, I basically just maintained where I was. I lost a place at the start and stayed there.”

The Kiwi has faced an uphill battle to draw full power from his machine since the start of the season, but the improvements made by the Dutch team handed him a smoother drive from the start.

While not poor by any standards, the likes of PREMA and Hitech GP had previously been out of reach for Lawson, whereas this weekend he was able to compete with them more closely.

He continued: “Obviously, starting on pole you want to win but realistically I knew that still wasn’t really achievable, I knew the guys were going to be coming really quick.

“I could keep them behind if they were side-by-side coming into a corner, that was no problem because you can defend, but when they get close enough that they can DRS past you and clear you before the corner, there is nothing that you can do.”

Although the overall power of the car had improved, Lawson revealed that tyre degradation proved problematic at Silverstone, an issue which the team struggled to combat.

This was seen as Leonardo Pulcini and Robert Shwartzman both shot past him in the PREMA and Hitech cars on Sunday for first and second, before he managed to stave off Pedro Piquet’s Trident.

Lawson revealed: “We tried to make changes from Saturday to improve because we lost our tyres really, really quickly and that was something that we wanted to try and fix, but we weren’t able to do that and after about five laps they were just gone.

“I could keep Piquet behind, but everybody else was too difficult. As soon as Pulcini came and as soon as the PREMA came, it was very difficult and then in the end, I nearly lost the podium on the last lap. But, I thought I have fought this hard to stay there, I am not going to give up now and I managed to bring third home, which is really good for the team and for myself as well.

“It is a shame that they touched behind me and he Piquet got a puncture and ended up spinning off, because it was a nice battle up until them. He had actually passed me through Stowe, but I just braked really late into the last two corners and sent it back around the outside. I basically just decided ‘you can stay there and we will end up crashing or you can back out, and he backed out."

Despite his placing as the Championship’s youngster driver, Lawson believes he has adapted well to F3 thanks to his experience in previous categories, including a title win in the Toyota Racing Series.

“I don't think that the age is a problem because the experience is actually quite decent. I haven’t done Formula 3, which I guess is the only thing which is different to the other guys who have already done a season of either European F3 or GP3, but I have driven quite a lot.

“I’ve done the Toyota Racing Series in New Zealand summertime and I went against some really competitive guys and had a good season there. I knew this was going to be a big learning curve.

“It is going to be difficult taking it to teams like PREMA, ART and Hitech at the moment, who are really, really strong, but I am learning. For me, I am just going to do the best drive I can every time I get in the car.”

Lawson currently lies 10th in the FIA Formula 3 driver standings on 22-points and will hope to continue his upward trajectory in Budapest at the beginning of August.