Jordan King continued to take the fight to a whole host of far more experienced adversaries in the sixth round of the 2013 FIA Formula 3 European Championship at the Norisring in Germanyand even a contentious penalty in the first of the meetings three races could not take the shine off another impressive weekend.
King travelled to Germany for the resumption of the fiercely-contested FIA Formula 3 European Championship buoyed by a strong performance a week earlier at Zandvoort in the Netherlands, where he had sealed a top five finish on his blue riband F3 Masters debut. Although he was a Norisring virgin, the talented young Warwickshire ace wasted no time at all in getting to grips with the bumpy and demanding, short 1.4-mile street circuit in his Carlin-prepared, Volkswagen-powered Dallara single-seater.
With barriers all around the lap, you dont have a foots margin of error like you do at other tracks, he reflected. You have the wall as a margin of error! That made maintaining concentration absolutely key, because you couldnt get away with even the tiniest of mistakes or risk any half-hearted moves. It was quite dusty off-line, as well, which meant if you messed up you would run wideand if you ran too wide, you would be in the wall. Every little error was punished.
No errors were forthcoming from King during practice, as he lapped sixth-quickest out of the 28 extremely high-calibre contenders, less than a tenth of a second adrift of the benchmarkand reckoning he could have gone even faster.
Unfortunately, a wrong turn on set-up direction ahead of qualifying saw the highly-rated Stoneleigh-based hotshot slip to 12th on the starting grid for race one and 11th for the following two encounters. That practically the entire field was blanketed by less than a second merely served to compound the situationand amongst the Carlin quintet, only his third-year F3 team-mate Harry Tincknell fared better.
From there, though, King raced well, taking the chequered flag eighth in the opener and ninth in races two and three around a circuit at which overtaking is invariably at a premiuma fact that frustrated his efforts to advance further given that he outpaced four of the drivers who finished ahead of him in the second outing and posted the fifth-quickest lap outright in the finale.
Even more frustratingly, the McLaren Autosport Award finalist, British Racing Drivers Club (BRDC) SuperStar and MSA Academy member was one of a staggering 12 competitors to receive a retrospective time penalty in race one due to the series controversial yellow flag ruledemoting him to a totally unrepresentative 17th place. Needless to say, like many of his similarly-relegated rivals, King was distinctly nonplussed.
I got really good first laps each time, but then couldnt stay with the leaders, he confessed. We struggled to make the car come on quickly enough, and whilst we were strong towards the end and closed back in on the drivers ahead, by then it was too late. Overtaking was incredibly difficult; I was constantly looking for possible moves, but you couldnt take a wide line into a corner in an attempt to gain the cutback on the exit, because there was a wall there! If wed been able to get the car to come on sooner, it could have been a different story...
I was really happy with race one initially, and finishing eighth earned me some solid pointsor so I thought. What happened afterwards was a real kick in the teethand worse still, nobody really understood quite why they had been penalised!
When the yellow flags fly, the regulations stipulate that youre not allowed to improve upon your previous best lap, but as your tyres heat up, you generally get faster, and if youve been losing time in battles up until that stage, you have to really ease off to avoid going too quickly. Youre left with a situation where drivers need to back off by different amounts, which is massively confusing and it often boils down more to luck than judgement.
One thing that owes nothing at all to luck is the 19-year-olds excellent eighth spot in the title standings midway through his maiden campaign of F3 actiona position he has comfortably retained as he looks ahead to the next round at the Nrburgring in mid-August.
King boasts a superb record around the German Grand Prix venue, having finished a remarkable fifth there in only his second appearance in the FIA Formula Two Championship in 2011, before overcoming a litany of electrical issues to ascend the rostrum in the Formula Renault Northern European Cup this time last year.
By the end of the Norisring weekend, I felt we had made some really encouraging progress, concluded the Hugo Boss brand ambassador. I was pleased with my performance considering it was my first time racing on a street circuitto not hit the wall once I dont think was too shabby! I was top rookie again, and as quick asif not quicker thanmy team-mate who had won there 12 months ago.
Looking at the championship table, the top six are beginning to pull away a little now, so we need to reel them back in. There are some hugely experienced F3 drivers out theresome in their third or even fourth year at this levelbut Ive already proved that Im capable of taking them on and competing up at the front. I dont know whether I can catch the guys ahead, if Im honestbut Ill certainly be giving it a damn good go!
