Fresh off the back of clinching the coveted British F3 Championship crown, Jordan King has shifted his sights towards securing a top five overall ranking in his maiden campaign in the fiercely-contested FIA Formula 3 European Championship, too, after storming to a superb second-place finish at Zandvoort.
Buoyed by his British title triumph and having shone with an excellent fifth position in the prestigious Masters of Formula 3 event around the legendary ex-F1 circuit – nestled deep in the sand dunes of the Dutch North Sea coast – earlier in the summer, King returned to the classic track in positive mood. He duly lapped an eye-catching second-fastest amongst the 27 contenders in free practice, a mere two tenths of a second shy of the outright benchmark in his Carlin-prepared, Volkswagen-powered Dallara single-seater.
“Winning the British Championship didn’t change my approach or mentality in any way,” underlined the talented young Warwickshire ace. “I just wanted to take everything I had learned so far and really capitalise upon that. I’d say Zandvoort is pretty much the perfect circuit for an F3 car with so many fast and sweeping corners, and I felt optimistic after how quick we had been there in the Masters meeting – qualifying had left us back in the pack where we shouldn’t have been, but our race pace had been strong.”
There were no such issues in qualifying this time around, as King lined up a superb fourth for each of the first two races and third for race three, less than a tenth of a second adrift of the front row of the grid and – significantly – ahead of all his immediate championship rivals. The outcome marked his best combined performance of the season to-date – and the McLaren Autosport Award finalist, British Racing Drivers’ Club (BRDC) SuperStar and MSA Academy member would maintain that stellar form in the opening encounter.
“Given its nature, Zandvoort is such a hard circuit at which to overtake,” he explained, “particularly with the calibre of driving that you find in European F3 – you really don’t see many mistakes. We put old tyres on for race one to preserve our new rubber for the remainder of the weekend, and that left us struggling for speed a little – especially in the closing stages.
“I held position from the start and could just about hang onto the top three – but no more than that – and towards the end, I had Raffaelle Marciello piling on the pressure behind, which meant I had to be fairly firm in terms of shutting the door on him on several occasions.”
Retaining his composure like a seasoned pro, the series’ pre-eminent rookie staved off the championship leader magnificently to capture fourth place and with it a very solid haul of points – what he justifiably described as ‘a great result’. He repeated the feat in race two as he took the chequered flag barely half-a-second shy of the rostrum – but he made sure to save the very best ‘til last in the weekend’s third and final outing.
Gaining a spot with a lightning getaway when the starting lights went out, King proceeded to keep F3 Masters winner and European title protagonist Felix Rosenqvist honest throughout, never allowing the gap between the pair to extend much beyond a second and pulling away at will from the battle behind.
“I’ve been working hard on my starts, and that really paid off,” acknowledged the highly-rated Stoneleigh-based hotshot. “Daniil Kvyat was a little slow away, which gave me a run and I was able to pass him around the outside into Turn One for the first time.
“After that, I focussed upon putting Rosenqvist under as much pressure as I could, but after dominating the Masters in the manner that he had and with the level of experience he has in F3 being in his fourth year now, I knew he would be an incredibly tough nut to crack. I pushed hard, though, and he certainly never had any opportunity to relax!”
A tremendously impressive effort as he narrowed the deficit to less than four tenths of a second at the flag, the runner-up spoils represented King’s second podium and finest finish in European F3 to-date and elevated him to sixth position in the drivers’ standings – ahead of a good many competitors with considerably more experience than him. Having added consistency to his armoury to complement the raw pace that has always been so much in evidence, the 19-year-old Hugo Boss brand ambassador’s confidence is growing by the day.
“I was really encouraged by how the weekend went,” he concluded. “We scored a lot of points and have gained some serious ground in the championship – to the extent that the top five is now a very real target. Reaching it is obviously going to be difficult still, but that’s the goal over the remaining two rounds.
“Vallelunga will be very much an unknown as we have never been there before, but our test at Hockenheim earlier this month went extremely well, and when we raced there back in May, we very nearly got pole position and a victory. As a driver, I feel I’ve moved on a lot since then – and after all that we’ve achieved in 2013 so far, to come away from my rookie season in European F3 with a race win to my credit would be just the icing on the cake.”
