Kiwi motor racing ace Mitch Evans has celebrated his 18th birthday by bolting to the top of the GP3 world series standings after an excellent performance on the streets of Valencia.

Evans, who turned 18 yesterday, reeled in the big points by winning the feature race from pole position on Saturday night (NZT) and backed up nicely with a strong showing in the reverse grid second race last night, moving up the field to finish sixth.

His points haul for the weekend - 31 for winning race one and four in the less lucrative second race - was enough to see him overtake Finn Aaro Vainio, who was second in the feature race and seventh last night to collect 20 points for the weekend, in the overall standings.

Evans now has 74 points with Vainio four adrift. Daniel Abt is third, well behind on 42 points. Evans' MW Arden team also have a slender lead over Lotus GP in the teams' championship.

''I wasn't really expecting to be this weekend unless Aaro had a really bad weekend here,'' Evans said of his new position atop the standings following his efforts in Spain, which brought him his second race win of the season.

''I am really happy to have done pole, win and the fastest lap. We will keep pushing on.''

Evans said the opening race was as close as it gets. The young Aucklander was the only driver to go under two minutes and his best lap was 0.3 seconds faster than Vainio.

''It wasn't easy. Myself and Aaro were going pretty hard so it was a really close race. If I had made one mistake he would have been right on me.

''It was like that for most of the race and then I was fortunate enough to pull a bit of a gap as he made a small mistake. From the end on, I just pinned my ears back and tried to go for fastest lap, which I think we managed to do.''

The fourth of eight rounds in the series is at Silverstone in England from July 8-9 (NZT).

- © Fairfax NZ News