Jordan King amply underlined his credentials as one of the brightest lights on the international karting stage with a front-running performance weekend-long and a podium finish to-boot to successfully launch his bid for glory in the all-new WSK World Series at Portimão in Portugal’s Algarve.
The inaugural WSK World Series is an offshoot of the intensely-competitive and hotly-fought WSK Euro Series, and aside from Portugal will take in rounds in New Jersey in the USA and Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt between now and the end of October. With 37 KF2 class drivers in attendance of the very highest calibre around, the curtain-raising meeting would swiftly help to separate the wheat from the chaff – and taking place on the same bill as the high-profile FIA World Touring Car Championship (WTCC), the spotlight would be shining hard throughout.
“It’s a good circuit,” Jordan noted of a track he had never so much as set eyes upon prior to discovering it for the first time during practice. “There’s a little bit of gradient in some places, and it has different types of corners. Pretty much all the top European drivers were there, so the competition was of a high level and the locals did start off with a bit of an advantage, but it wasn’t that difficult to learn and once I got into it I really enjoyed driving it – and we were pretty much on it or near enough from the word ‘go’.”
Feeling confident, that optimism would be corroborated by fourth position in his group in qualifying and seventh overall – “The Birel chassis and BMB engine felt pretty good; we struggled with understeer all weekend, but that was our only major issue,” the Harbury ace reported – and that would be converted into a brace of fifth places and a comfortable runner-up spot in his three heats, improving in terms of pace on every occasion and always finishing within three seconds of the winner.
In heat two, indeed, Jordan featured in the lead scrap all the way through and proved to be consistently one of if not outright the quickest driver on the circuit as he gave hot pursuit after falling back slightly at the start. What’s more, in two of the three races he set a better fastest lap time than the winner to earn himself fifth on the starting grid for the pre-final, as the 16-year-old acknowledged that his form was extremely ‘promising’.
“I got up to second in the pre-final, but then halfway through the race Yu Kanamaru came past me and in doing so he slid wide,” he recounted. “I kept to my normal racing line which left us side-by-side, but because the next corner was a left-hander and he had the inside line for it, I had to back out of it which allowed Karol Basz to get up the inside of me too.
“That put me off-line and cost me a lot of time and places, and after that I ended up in the middle of the chasing pack and it all kicked off. I recovered to seventh in the end which meant we still collected good points for the championship, but I was disappointed in truth. We were just a bit unlucky, to be honest.”
Having dropped as low as eighth place as he found himself unwittingly caught up in a fraught six-way dogfight, Jordan was nonetheless again able to demonstrate his raw speed, mature racecraft and undoubted potential – and he would do so once more in the all-important grand final later in the day. Only this time, he would be fittingly rewarded.
“I got up to third at the start and was just about hanging onto the top two,” related the Repton School pupil. “Ignazio D’Agosto made a move on Luke Varley for the lead and I followed him through into second. I then tried to go for the lead myself, but D’Agosto saw it coming and turned in. That lost us both a lot of time and I dropped back to fifth.
“I remained there until two drivers in front of me collided, so I was able to take advantage of that and then started to catch the two leaders again towards the end but just ran out of laps. If my move on D’Agosto had come off, I could possibly have won, but we were still right in there so that was encouraging – and I got to take a trophy home, so it was all good.”
Indeed, there was barely six hundredths of a second to choose between the lead trio at the chequered flag in terms of lap time as Jordan wound up less than seven tenths shy of victory to conclude proceedings fourth in the standings with a third of the WSK World Series campaign now completed. Moreover, the result marked a hat-trick of rostrum finishes in swift succession for the new Hugo Boss ambassador following back-to-back podiums in the national Super 1 Series – and next time, he hopes, it will be the top step that he mounts.
“We are on decent kit now and it’s all starting to come together,” he reflected at the end of the weekend, “so if we keep working hard on the engine and everything carries on moving forwards like it is at the moment, we should be able to get some wins – and I’d like to think we can go for the title too.”
