Recently-crowned British F3 Champion Jordan King signed off his maiden campaign in the fiercely-contested FIA Formula 3 European Championship with a hat-trick of top ten finishes in the Hockenheim finale – in so doing, cementing a superb sixth position in the overall drivers’ standings.
King headed to the German Grand Prix venue eager to conclude his debut season at F3 level on a positive note, and true to form, he was immediately on the pace, lapping a threatening fifth-fastest out of the 28 distinctly high-calibre contenders during Friday practice in his Carlin-prepared, Volkswagen-powered Dallara single-seater.
“I felt pretty confident after the speed we had displayed in the previous race meeting and test session at Hockenheim earlier in the year,” he underlined. “I’ve got a good record there in general having reached the podium in the lower formulae, and it’s always fun to compete on an F1 circuit, so I was really looking forward to the weekend.”
In a disrupted qualifying session, persistent traffic woes restricted the talented young Warwickshire ace to just tenth on the grid for race one and eighth for race two. Fifth spot for race three was rather more representative of his potential, however, and carried his top ten qualifying tally for the season to an impressive 22 – half of them inside the top five.
From there, King raced well in the opening encounter to progress to sixth. Pushing hard and maintaining the pressure on his fifth-placed rival right the way to the chequered flag, he closed to barely a second adrift of his quarry by dint of lapping consistently amongst the very quickest drivers in the field.
In the next outing, the McLaren Autosport Award finalist, British Racing Drivers’ Club (BRDC) SuperStar and MSA Academy member conceded a position early on but was relentless in his efforts to reclaim it, with his dogged determination paying off on the penultimate tour following an entertaining wheel-to-wheel duel that lasted several corners. Race three promised to be the best of all – but the weather had other ideas...
“We showed some good pace in race one, which enabled me to work my way through the pack and I was happy to finish sixth from where we had begun,” King related. “For race two, we went with old tyres in order to preserve our new set for Sunday, when we would be starting higher up the grid. That left us struggling for grip compared to a lot of the other drivers and made overtaking difficult.
“Unfortunately, having purposely saved our new rubber for race three, by the time it came around, the heavens had opened with a vengeance – completely scuppering our strategy! That made the track really treacherous, with puddles everywhere and cars aquaplaning all over the place.
“I ran fifth early on in a three-way battle for third and I was feeling optimistic, but visibility was really bad and as I tried to keep out of the spray of the car ahead along the straight, I hit a big puddle. That sent me into an instant spin, and I rejoined down in 13th. It was an exciting race after that and we were pretty quick as we fought back into the top ten – which certainly wasn’t easy in those conditions!”
A stirring recovery as he scythed his way grittily past his adversaries into ninth place, the result marked the rapid Stoneleigh-based hotshot’s 20th top ten finish of what has been an outstanding campaign and secured him sixth spot out of no fewer than 36 competitors in the final points table – by some margin the leading F3 rookie.
Not only that, but King distinguished himself as one of just six contenders to have scored in every meeting, and although he still has one appearance left on his 2013 calendar – the prestigious, non-championship Macau Grand Prix in mid-November – already his attentions are beginning to shift towards the next step.
“Macau is going to be a case of getting swiftly up-to-speed and being fast when it matters,” mused the 19-year-old Hugo Boss brand ambassador. “It’s not like a normal circuit – you really have to accustom yourself to all of its intricacies – and the key will be to absorb as much as possible as quickly as possible to extract the maximum out of the weekend.
“It was always going to be a long shot to finish fifth overall in Europe, and I certainly wasn’t disheartened to end up sixth. It’s been a really strong season, which is obviously encouraging looking ahead to 2014 – and if we work hard over the winter to build upon everything we have learned this year, hopefully we will come out all guns blazing in a few months’ time.”
