Harry King's powers of recovery keep him in Mobil 1 Porsche Supercup title contention

Credit: Harry King in Zandvoort. Photo: Porsche Motorsport

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Harry King displayed his powers of recovery at Zandvoort this weekend to keep himself in contention for the Mobil 1 Porsche Supercup title heading into this weekend's season finale at Monza in Italy.

The Maidenhead driver had closed the gap to defending champion Larry ten Voorde to just seven points after outscoring his title rival in his previous two races in Hungary and Belgium, which including a stunning victory for King at the Hungaroring.

And he looked in the kind of form to do further damage to ten Voorde's slender lead when he went third quickest in practice behind the wheel of his BWT Lechner Racing-run car.

However, qualifying in mixed weather conditions proved more challenging, with King well in condition for pole while the drivers were out in the wet conditions. However, Ten Voorde took advantage of the drying track to go quickest, with King finishing back in ninth after his final run.

Aware of the need to make up ground in the race, King got away well from the line at lights out and quickly jumped a place to eighth before a hard-fought battle saw him take Mathys Jaubert's place for seventh just before the safety car was deployed.

King wasted little time in despatching Kas Haverkort on the restart to move into the top six and then followed teammate Robert de Haan as both cars past one of King's title rivals - Marvin Klein - to put the Maidenhead driver into fifth.

A second safety car period would back the field up once more, however, try as he might in the closing laps, he wasn't able to make up any further ground and had to settle for fifth spot. It was still an impressive feat after qualifying as Zandvoort is one of the more difficult circuits to overtake on.

With just the final round in Italy still to run, King remains second behind ten Voorde and knows he simply must win - and hope his main rival fails to finish or finishes well down the leaderboard - to secure the crown for the first time.

“Qualifying wasn’t the result we were hoping for given the pace we knew was in the car, and it meant that I had a hard job ahead of me in the race,” he said.

“Zandvoort is such a difficult circuit for overtaking, particularly in these cars, so the fact that we were able to come through to fifth place was something that I was really pleased with and I’m actually really proud of the performance despite the fact that it certainly isn’t the result I was hoping for coming into the weekend.”