Jordan King has set his sights on at least one more podium before the season is out, as the Warwickshire youngster aims for a top six finish in the overall standings.
The Manor Competition driver endured a torrid time at Rockingham, but the Hugo Boss brand ambassador made the best of a bad situation claiming ninth and seventh in rounds fifteen and sixteen of the CERTINA Formula Renault UK championship at the Northamptonshire circuit.
The weekend started strongly for King, but his Friday practice pace seemed to disappear when it mattered in qualifying. Despite qualifying a solid fifth for race one the Stoneleigh-based driver could only manage eleventh for race two.
King was at a loss to explain the disappearance of his Friday practice pace.
“As soon as we put new tyres on for qualifying, though, everything suddenly changed and it was really hard to get a lap time out of the car – I felt like I was having to push a lot more than usual,” said King. “It was frustrating, because we couldn’t really put our finger on what was wrong – it was no one particular thing. We ended up fifth in the first session, but when we looked at the data afterwards, we felt that with a 100 per cent perfect lap – with everything on-the-limit – we could probably have been second and maybe even challenged for pole.”
At the start of race one King held his position but couldn’t make ground on those in front. However, midway through the race a slight error cost him dear.
“I held position off the line at the start of race one, but then I struggled to keep up with the top four. Later on, I had the championship leader on my tail for a few laps, and with the speed he had, I was actually surprised I managed to keep him behind me for as long as I did. I made a little mistake, though, and ran wide, which dropped me down to ninth.“I was really fired-up after that, and over the remaining three laps, I chased down and caught the driver ahead. If we’d had just one more lap, I feel pretty confident we could have overtaken him… Our relative pace wasn’t actually that bad; I was just disappointed at having thrown away fifth place.”
Race two would be a similar story for King, after his lowly qualifying place of eleventh had already left him with a lot to do.
“I got a good start, and everyone seemed to bunch up on the inside heading into the first corner,” he recounted, “so I went for the outside. It was pretty tight, but I ended up gaining two places there, which was good. I then got another two positions from a coming-together ahead, and over the first few laps, we were really on it and caught the driver in sixth – but his speed seemed to pick up as ours dropped away. From then on, I was in no-man’s land, just pushing on in the hope that something might happen. It was quite a lonely race, to be honest.”
It would be a frustrating end to a frustrating weekend for the 17-year-old, however a top six finish is high on the agenda for King as he looks towards the end of the season. King currently sits three points away from team-mate Alice Powell, who is in sixth position in the championship.
“We’ve been the team leader all year, really,” he mused in conclusion. “There have been so many races where we could have finished inside the top five and been the top Manor driver by quite a way, but for one reason or another, things haven’t worked out. Where we are in the championship doesn’t reflect the speed we’ve had at all – if we hadn’t been robbed of the win at Snetterton, for example, it would be a different story now entirely.
“I’m the least experienced driver on the grid, so I’ve always been on the back foot a little bit in that I haven’t raced around the circuits before whereas a lot of the others have – but I have raced at both Brands Hatch GP and Silverstone, so hopefully we should be able to hit the ground running there. I definitely want another podium before the season’s out.”
