Rising star Harry King remains firmly in contention for the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup Championship title despite seeing his impressive run of podium finishes come to a close at Silverstone.
The BWT Lechner Racing driver had produced an astonishing recovery drive in the previous event at the Red Bull Ring, after battling back from being tipped into a half-spin on lap one to secure a fine second place finish.
That made it three successive runner-up positions for the Briton, who headed into his home event sitting second in the championship standings as a result.
Despite tricky conditions in free practice, Harry was right at the sharp end of the times, with the BRDC Superstar racer initially leading the way before dropping back to P2 when one of his on-track rivals had a lap time reinstated.
Regardless, it left Harry in a strong position going into qualifying and - in a session that started in damp conditions before drying out - he secured a place on the second row of the grid with the fourth quickest time.
On a weekend where the weather would play havoc with the Silverstone schedule, heavy rain arrived prior to the start of the race with the decision taken to start behind the safety car.
However, with less than a lap completed under caution, it soon became apparent that conditions were just too wet for the action to safely get underway, with standing water at parts of the circuit.
After a 20 minute delay in the pits, the race was finally able to get going with a safety car start, and it was the start of lap three when racing got underway in earnest.
Eager to make up ground, Harry immediately put pressure on Alessandro Ghiretti for third and a fine move on lap four saw him go around the outside of the Italian into Luffield to move into the podium positions.
Keen to try and chase down Larry ten Voorde and Marvin Klein ahead, Harry was instead forced to run wide when team-mate Robert de Haan tried to dive down the inside at the Loop, dropping Harry back into fourth spot.
Holding his position as the laps counted down, Harry closed back onto the rear of the lead trio when an off for Huub van Eindhoven saw the safety car deployed.
Unfortunately for Harry, the delays at the start of the race meant the action would run to a time limit, and the safety car was only called back in as the field came round to take the chequered flag as the clock hit zero - leaving Harry to finish in fourth place.
Harry remains second in the championship standings.
“For whatever reason we just didn’t have the outright pace this weekend, which is a shame at my home event,” he said.
“However, it’s a mark of how strong our season has been to date if finishing in fourth is a disappointing result, and we have a few weekends now to take a look over all the data from this event to make sure we come out fighting when we get to Hungary for the next round.
“Having won from pole at the Hungaroring last season, my focus is firmly on repeating that result to keep the pressure on in the championship battle.”
