News Article
Bad luck blights King in TRS season opener
Hugo Boss Ambassador Jordan King suffered a race weekend of misfortune in New Zealand for the opening three races of the 2012 Toyota Racing Series.
All seemed to be in extremely good order when Jordan put his M2 Competition car on the front row of the grid for the first race of his season, but in a continuation of bad luck that seemed to blight the end of his maiden racing campaign, King was back in the wars on Saturday afternoon.
Despite losing second in the early running, the 17-year-old had retaken the position by the time the safety car was deployed following an incident further down the order. Chaos reigned at the restart with everyone jostling for position and it was an old adversary in Josh Hill – son of former F1 Champion Damon – that played a part in Jordan’s downfall. Contact from Hill’s front nose pierced a rear tyre on King’s car and the puncture sent him tumbling down the order and eventually into retirement.
The second race didn’t prove any better for the newly sponsored King of Shaves racer as he endured his second non-finish in succession.
Starting from the rear of the grid in race three, King was determined to display his genuine speed with a result to match. The talented youngster didn’t disappoint as he carved his way through the field to claim a credible top ten position at the finish.
The weekend yielded no points for King in what had looked like an extremely promising start to his Toyota Racing Series adventure, but the talented teenager remained confident when his official website caught up with him ahead of round two at the Timaru International Speedway next weekend.
What did you think of the circuit? What’s it like? How long did it take to learn?
I really enjoyed the track; even though the lap is quite short and didn’t take me particularly long to learn, it was nonetheless very demanding and posed lots of new challenges.
How strong is the level of competition?
The level of competition is actually quite strong, and it was all a bit of a step into the unknown for me since I hadn’t raced against any of the other drivers in cars before.
How bad was the weather over the weekend? How tricky did that make driving?
The weather was constantly changing really quickly, from wet to dry to wet to dry again. That made things quite tricky for us drivers, but even harder for the teams to get everything right. To their immense credit, M2 Competition did get everything right so it was all good.
You displayed strong pace in practice and excellent form in qualifying – were you encouraged by that?
Yes, our pace was really good in practice and we put everything we learnt into qualifying and found the last bit of speed that we needed.
What’s the team like?
The team has a big mixture of nationalities, and it is a good laugh. I am enjoying being there.
Tell us about the three races.
In the first race, it rained on the warm-up lap and I moved into the lead when the driver ahead spun off, but then I had to back off to avoid hitting him. That cost me a position, and then I made a mistake and lost another. The race was subsequently stopped, and at the re-start I was in third place. I got away really well and went up the inside of the two guys ahead, but one of them hit me with his front wing and gave me a puncture – and that, unfortunately, was that.
In the second race, I had a problem that caused me to keep losing places at the re-starts. I was in fourth, but eventually ended up breaking down. That meant that in race three, I started last. It was raining so much that I could barely see anything at all, but I managed to overtake quite a few others and the car was really good. I kept it on the road and finished sixth.
How would you assess the weekend overall?
The speed we showed was very encouraging, but we just suffered some really bad luck.
How are you feeling going into the next weekend now?
I’m looking forward to the next weekend as a fresh start, and most importantly of all, we know the speed we have is good enough to win.
