George King and the #14 Team Virage Ligier JS P320 returned to the podium at round three of the 2023 Ultimate Cup Series in Germany, narrowly missing out on a second victory of the season after a thrilling fightback came up just short of top spot after 500 kilometres of racing.
Along with co-drivers Mihnea Stefan and Manuel Espirito Santo, the Briton helped Team Virage set the LMP3 class pace at Hockenheim, despite never having been to the historic venue before. King did not feel at a disadvantage, however, having put in precious time on the team's simulator, and was quickly up to speed, carving further into his lap-time after comparing his data and technique against that of the more experienced Espirito Santo, who regularly drives the Ligier in the European Le Mans Series.
With his qualifying efforts being repeatedly hampered by traffic when the #14 machine had its tyres in the optimum operating window, the 22-year-old threw everything at his last effort, and was up on his previous best when slower cars again thwarted the attempt.
"Qualifying was hard as the team tried to let me out into clean air but, by the time my tyres got up to pressure and temperature, there were always slower cars on track ahead of me," King explained. "On my fastest lap, I was four-tenths up coming into the last sector when a slower LMP3 car — on a shakedown lap after suffering previous damage — didn’t get out the way! What was worse was that they refused to let me through, sometimes leaving a massive gap into corners and then shutting the door at the last moment, even when I was alongside! I backed off to try and get one more lap in, but the best of the tyres had gone and traffic was everywhere."
Despite King's obvious frustration, his efforts joined those of his team-mates' in securing pole position for Team Virage, allowing the Briton to line up at the front of the field when racing got underway on Sunday morning. A good getaway then allowed him to retain the advantage into Turn 1, before pulling out a big gap over his rivals ahead of the first mandatory fuel stop. Emerging from the pits some 30 seconds behind the new leader, King put his head and foot down to reduce the deficit to just four seconds — before both cars copped drive-through penalties that dropped them back.
Subsequently hitting his lap-time and fuel saving targets, King powered through a double stint, driving for over an hour-and-a-half in sweltering conditions weather and surviving an empty drinks bottle over the last 15 laps to bring the #14 car in to hand over to Stefan second in class and P3 overall.
A perfectly-timed stop coincided with a safety car interruption, gaining the Virage crew a massive amount of time over its rivals, but that advantage was quickly wiped out as an unfortunate delay at the second fuel stop saw the clock ticking the wrong way for the #14. Although Stefan and Espirito Santo both ate into the leader's cushion — with the Portuguese driver in danger of running out of fuel such was his pace — the yellow-and-black machine could not get close enough and had to pray for misfortune to strike the winning #10 car.
"It was always going to be a game of catch-up after the #10 car spent more than two-and-a-half minutes less than us in pit-stops due to their silver/bronze driver line-up," King admitted. "It was a mammoth effort from the whole team to try and gain that time back, but we ultimately finished P2 — which sucks knowing that we could’ve won if events didn’t happen the way they did. With pit-stop penalties taken into consideration, finishing 20 seconds behind the winning car shows the pace and potential we had, so we can still be happy with the result, and I with my personal progress."
With the Ultimate Cup Series taking a break until September, King's next outing will be in the Ligier European Series, with round two of its revised calendar taking place at Le Mans this weekend (3-4 June).
