George King thundered to the front of the field in atrocious conditions at Mugello, outperforming rivals of greater experience at the fourth round of the European Endurance Prototype Cup.
As has become commonplace in his 2024 campaign, King received a late call-up from his team to contest the Italian event, joining newcomers Jimmy Chou and Kevin Rabin behind the wheel of Graff's #8 NP02 class entry. With the UCS not having raced at Mugello for five seasons, the weekend presented King with both an unfamiliar venue and car, the Briton having driven Graff's LMP3 machine on his first outing with the team, at round two in Portugal in May. The reigning UCS champion was at least familiar with one of his new team-mates, having raced with Chou in LMP4 last season, and returning to the Graff fold eased all three into a weekend that featured the biggest-ever UCS grid and drivers from both the European Le Mans Series and Le Mans Cup.
Despite the Nova Proto being a new car to him, and only limited track time with which to adapt to it, King quickly managed to get up to speed, the pre-event homework he had done on the Mugello layout paying dividends as he was able to focus on honing the setup of the NP02 during a practice session already being blighted by changeable weather conditions.
"I learnt the track fairly quickly and was slowly chipping away towards an optimal setup, but conditions were changing with every session and there were a lot of red flag interruptions," King confirmed. "Returning to the Graff team certainly made things easier though and, having become accustomed to their way of working at Portimao, I was soon setting fast times on tyres that already more than 250km on them."
Confidence boosted by his performance in practice, King headed into qualifying optimistic of a good grid position, but aware that he would have to produce a near-perfect lap to ensure that the #8 machine started towards the front of the field with a far from ideal forecast looming for the race later that day. Even though the session itself was run on a dry track, the 24-year-old still found it difficult to put a complete lap together due to the number of red flags, and was somewhat relieved to put the Graff car sixth on the overall timesheet, and third fastest in class.
"I was half a second up on the field in the first sector alone before they brought a halt to the session," King lamented. "It was tough to get a fast lap in anyway with all the red flags, but that was particularly painful! However, considering the session was cut short, and in spite of the obvious disappointment of having been denied a potential pole position time, I was happy with the result, especially as I was having to run new tyres on the left side of the car and used rubber on the right due to the smaller allocation allowed to the Nova class."
Handed the start of the race due to having greater experience than his team-mates, King wasted little time in confirming both pace and poise. Although the event got underway behind the safety car due to the inclement conditions, the Essex native made up a couple of places into the first corner before fighting his way to the front over the next few laps, turning in times a couple of seconds quicker than the leader before setting himself up for a successful pass into turn one. Once in front, King used his superior speed to pull away from the pack, opening out a massive 15-second advantage — only for the expected storm to hit the circuit and make driving virtually impossible.
"They were probably the worst conditions I have ever driven in — and that includes anything I've encountered on the road," King recalled. "It got so bad that I couldn't see more than 50 metres in front and was having to crawl around some corners to ensure that I didn't go off! Prior to that, I had been the fastest car on track, even though I was lapping slower traffic, and had managed to build a sizeable lead before the safety car was called."
With conditions worsening, the organisers had little option but to suspend the race, with the break lasting some 90 minutes while the worst of the storm passed. But, even after King was strapped back into the cockpit for a couple of exploratory laps, the red flags flew again and there was no racing for a further three-quarters of an hour.
When the go-ahead was finally given for a resumption, King had to give up the wheel to his team-mates, with Chou and Rabin doing well to keep the car on track and bring it to the chequered flag, albeit in an eighth place unrepresentative of the Briton's earlier efforts.
"In reality, with all the interruptions and the rules requiring our all-silver rated line-up to spend longer on our pit-stops, a podium was always unlikely," King explained. "Despite that, eighth in class still made us the best Pro car, which is something I think we can be happy about. On a personal level, performing as well as I did against some world-class drivers, especially gaining and building a lead in some horrible conditions, is very encouraging for my development — and thanks for that have to go to both Graff and my manager, James Winslow, for putting their trust in me this weekend."
King now hopes that another strong showing will improve his chances of picking up a full-time drive, either in Europe or America, as talks continue for the 2025 season.
