News Article
Jordan King Super 1 Stars of Tomorrow Kart racing
Jordan King has made remarkable progress in karting despite having been competing for just two years, and so much has he come along in that time he is already eyeing a national title.
The Harbury ace may have got into the sport late – and somewhat by chance – but he is rapidly making up for lost time with some eye-catching performances. To see him out on-track, you would be hard pressed to tell he only first climbed into a kart 24 months ago.
“I did some indoor karting at some parties,” he explains, “and the guy running it said I was quite good and should go and try outdoor karting too. My dad then got in touch with Ian Goff and we went to a test day. It was a lot faster with a lot more grip, and much harder to get used to at first.”
Goff is the man who runs Xtreme Racing, and only the next month Jordan took his preliminary ARKS (Association of Racing Schools) test before competing in his first true race meeting at Kimbolton in October, 2005, clinching the novice trophy.
Once off novice plates, he had just one more race before the time was deemed right for Jordan to step up to the national scene with a Super 1 outing at Three Sisters near Wigan, where he narrowly missed out on automatic promotion through into the cadet ‘A’ final. Despite the majority of the circuits being unknown ground to him, he made his breakthrough soon afterwards at PF International in the second round of Super 1, securing an encouraging 15th place against the best cadet drivers in the country.
“Going into 2006 my aim was simply to get through into the ‘A’ finals, then halfway through the year I was starting to run mid-pack and by the end I was beginning to win races,” he says, summarising his maiden campaign.
Indeed, Jordon was initially torn between his two passions of racing and football, being a star player for his village squad and the top goal-scorer for the team – the league champions – in his last season with them despite missing four games. It was, at times, a real juggling act.
“At first it was difficult to drag myself away from the football,” he confesses, “but that became easier after I started to win races…”
One of his best early results came in BRDC Stars of Tomorrow at Genk in Belgium in 2006 – a weekend that would also witness what he refers to as his best crash…
“Going down the straight I had my head down,” he recalls, “but Sam Jenkins came up alongside me. As I saw him I started to drift across to the left, went off the track and straight into the tyres. I hit the start-finish gate head-on at top speed and managed to throw eight tyres across the track…”
He had been lying solidly inside the top five at the time, and further measure of Jordan’s startling progress came when he triumphed in the final cadet race of his career at Shenington, seeing off the cream of the class crop including the likes of Alex Albon, James Appleton, Jake Dennis and current British MSA Cadet Champion Brett Wykes. And with that, he moved up to Mini Max.
“When I started off in Mini Max it was quite hard,” he admits. “I wasn’t strong enough for the kart and first and we could only complete half a day during test days because it was a lot harder physically, but now it’s ok. Back at the start of the year I was running midfield in club meetings, and now I’m consistently up at the front in Stars and Super 1. That’s really good, because it was a very big step-up for me to be able to come from the back of the pack and start racing against the front-runners.”
A starring performance in the wet during the prestigious annual Kartmasters event at PF International saw Jordan climb up through the field into second place in the grand final until he became a victim of treacherous conditions, and he would ultimately wind up a strong twelfth in Stars’ end-of-season drivers’ standings.
“Jordan has made fantastic progress in such a short time,” enthuses Goff. “he has rapidly become one of the top young karters in the UK, and we have great things planned for him in the future. We are very impressed with him.”
An all-round sportsman, Jordan has a sports scholarship at Repton School, the leading public football school in the country and former alma mater to Roald Dahl, Jeremy Clarkson and C.B. Fry. Prior to that he used to captain his old school at both cricket and football, but he leaves little doubt that his focus for the moment is firmly on his racing. A Formula Renault test is planned for over the winter months, ahead of an all-out assault on national Mini Max honours in 2008. given his relative lack of experience compared to his rivals, should he succeed that would be some accomplishment.
“After I started getting a bit quicker and moving towards the front, the other drivers up there didn’t know who I was so they tended to bully me around a bit,” the 13-year-old concluded. “I had to fight for everything and make a name for myself.”
They don’t bully him anymore.
