Had it come earlier on in his career, Jordan King acknowledged that the inaugural WSK Nations Cup might have been a frustrating event seeing as how the end result failed to do justice to his palpable potential – but given that it represented his final competitive karting outing, the highly-rated young Warwickshire star reflected that it was enjoyable simply to sign off with such an entertaining couple of races and, as ever, right on the leading pace.

After conceding in the build-up that whilst he had invariably been quick at La Conca in southern Italy, he had rarely enjoyed much good fortune there, Jordan confessed that ‘as it was my last race in karts I was obviously really keen to win, but the main thing was just to get a good, strong result and enjoy the weekend to end on a high’. That he would do – although without, once again, the blessing of Lady Luck.

Having missed Thursday testing, the Stoneleigh-based speed demon was thrown straight in at the deep end up against some 57 high-calibre KF2 class rivals from quite literally all around the globe, but in the wet on Friday he was right on the money from the very start, and immediately inside the top three. Lacking Thursday’s dry running time, however, left the 16-year-old at a disadvantage, and in an incredibly closely-matched field in which every tenth of a second – hundredth, even – counted, ninth in qualifying represented a very solid start.

“We were there or thereabouts and close enough to the pace,” he mused. “We were still playing catch-up in the heats, but our speed got better in each one. In the third heat, we set the fastest lap; I got knocked off onto the grass at the start and came back from 15th to fifth – I was really pleased with the pace we had. There are three or four places around the lap at La Conca where you can overtake, but it was hard because the entire field was separated by just two tenths of a second or so.”

A trio of very solid results – two fourths and a fifth, never far away at the chequered flag and with a better fastest lap time than the winner on each occasion – left Jordan a threatening sixth on the pre-final starting grid, and very much in with a fighting chance.

“That was a tough race,” he recollected, “but also probably one of the most enjoyable I’ve ever been in, because there were so many different leaders. We could perhaps have finished a bit higher, but ninth wasn’t a disaster and our speed was good again – it was just that some things didn’t quite fall our way.”

Lapping comfortably quicker than the race-winner once more, the Princethorpe College student wound up less than three seconds shy of victory in the pre-final in an extremely tight front-running pack – but then through no fault of his own, the grand final would swiftly go awry.

“I got up to fourth, and then my team-mate knocked me off,” he rued. “When we got back to the awning after the race, the atmosphere wasn’t the best! That dropped me down the order to 11th, and again, as everyone was so close on lap times, it was hard to come back through and regain ground. I was catching the group ahead by maybe a tenth of a second a lap, and towards the end there was a massive battle. It was really hard and I finished ninth again – but if I hadn’t been knocked off, I could have won. It was that close...”

In a photo-finish in which the leading ten contenders were blanketed by a mere three seconds, a flurry of frantic place-swapping turned the last lap into a veritable lottery. The statistics, however, ably bear Jordan’s conviction out, as he lapped faster than the top two and set a best effort a scant six hundredths off the quickest outright.

Concluding that ‘it ended on a sort-of high...it was good to be fast and to finish on an exciting note with two such fun races, but I was just a bit disappointed that it didn’t quite go our way’, the PSR-run hotshot was left afterwards to reflect upon a year of mixed fortunes on the international stage, during which he had overcome a shaky start to benefit from a mid-season team switch and come back fighting, picking out an outstanding victory at Castelletto in Italy and an impressive podium at Portimão in Portugal as notable highlights.

“It was my rookie in KF2, so it was always going to be hard,” he mused, “but if you compare how we did against other first-year drivers in the class, we were probably the best overall, which was pleasing. It’s a really tough class in terms of the competition and a pretty big step-up from KF3; it’s not so much the speed, but the fact that the racing is just so much harder and completely different. I’ve learned a lot, though, and it was encouraging to do so well and to leave karting off the back of some decent performances and results.”