Austria – Race 2: Jordan King makes the most of difficult conditions

Jordan King benefited from the penalties received by Sergey Sirotkin and Gustav Malja during the first race, which allowed him to move from ninth to eighth place in the main race, turning it into a valuable pole position for the Sunday morning race.

It was even a 100% Racing Engineering front row as Norman Nato held the second position. But the track was so waterlogged after the morning rain that the stewards decided to start the race under a safety car. It only pulled away after three laps.

At that moment, Jordan King managed to withstand the pressure from his teammate and maintain the lead. If the first two turns went smoothly, the third saw a collision between Sean Gelael and Frenchman Arthur Pic, resulting in the former’s retirement and the safety car returning to the track.

If Jordan King dominated the proceedings, his teammate had a much harder time on this still slippery track. He was thus overtaken by Oliver Rowland, Raffaele Marciello, and Luca Ghiotto. But that’s when the track started to dry significantly, as was the case yesterday during the F1 qualifying, forcing the drivers to try to cool their tires as much as possible.

Artem Markelov, outside of the points, was the first to gamble on switching to slicks. But he was imitated on the following lap by the majority of those who had nothing to lose when the safety car re-entered to clear Nicholas Latifi’s DAMS, which had spun in the first corner.

During the race restart, spectators witnessed an avalanche of overtakes, with Alex Lynn getting the better of Raffaele Marciello, only to be overtaken himself by a successful maneuver from Oliver Rowland. The Renault development driver thus registered his best result in the category, while the Williams protégé consoled himself with the thought of finishing on the podium after starting 11th.

Behind, Antonio Giovinazzi also made a very good move by gaining four places in the final laps, which allowed him to finish 5th. On the other hand, big disappointment for Luca Ghiotto, who made a mistake in the last corner and thus finished 9th, just behind Sergey Sirotkin, Pierre Gasly, and yesterday’s winner, Mitch Evans.

In the championship, the standings are still very tight, as Raffaele Marciello only has a ten-point lead over Mitch Evans and eleven over Norman Nato.

From our special correspondent in Spielberg