Brent Bookwalter sprinted to a season-best third place finish Tuesday at the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah to deliver the BMC Racing Team its second straight podium finish of the race.

Bookwalter first made a bid for the win by breaking away over the top of the day's major climb. When the peloton caught him and breakaway companion Daniel Eaton (Axeon Cycling Team), he enlisted the help of teammate Joey Rosskopf for a lead out. Bookwalter went on to finish behind Jure Kocjan (Team SmartStop) and Robin Carpenter (Hincapie Racing Team) in the sprint and move into sixth overall.

"I told Joey if he covered some moves and I could recover, I would go for the sprint," Bookwalter said. "He did a phenomenal job for me. He took me to about 400 meters to go, then one of the SmartStop guys - Travis McCabe - came up on the right and I jumped on his wheel. I know he has a really good kick, so I thought he was a good wheel to have. I tried to go over him with 200 meters to go, but Jure was right on my wheel and made pretty quick work of me."

Bookwalter said his breakaway earlier was the result of feeling good as the field crested the North Ogden Divide, 31 kilometers from the end of the 159.7-km race.

"I thought I could pull some of the strong guys with me, and ideally, we would have gone away with four or five guys," he said. "But no one came with me so I bridged up to the Axeon guy (Eaton). But we were no match for a big, chasing group."

Monday's Stage 1 winner, Kiel Reijnen (UnitedHealthcare Professional Cycling Team), kept the overall lead while Bookwalter is 10 seconds back.

BMC Racing Team Sport Director Jackson Stewart said everything is on track through the first two days of the seven-day race.

"We are looking for a stage win and we have been close two days in a row, so that is a good sign," Stewart said. "We have spread it across the team, too - yesterday with Taylor Phinney and today with Brent. The climb at the end was a little harder than we thought. We thought Taylor could get over it. But it was not actually harder than we thought, we just didn't know what the pace would be.

"It was good to see Brent give it a go and to see him so strong at the end and to see the guys rally behind him for the sprint was really a good thing. All the guys are good. Now it is just a matter of getting all the pieces to fall together."