Saturday’s Feature Race at Silverstone saw Racing Engineering’s Norman Nato and Jordan King finish 7th and 8th respectively, which meant that for yesterday’s 21 lap Sprint Race Jordan would be starting from pole position on the reversed grid with Norman beside him on the front row in 2nd position.
It was very cool at the circuit with air and track temperatures of 18° and 20° and the skies were very grey and it had rained earlier for the GP3 race but the track had mostly dried out. The two Racing Engineering drivers were starting on the Pirelli P Zero Orange hard compound tyre.
Jordan made a perfect start from pole position, leading into the first corner and at the end of the opening lap he led Matsushita by 1.3 seconds. Jordan continued to lead, keeping the gap to the ART car at about one second as all the leading drivers were being careful not to overstress their tyres in the early laps. On lap nine Jordan had pulled out a 1.9 second lead over Rowland which took him out of DRS range of Matsushita. Lap eleven, just past the halfway point of the race, saw Jordan now leading Ghiotto who had got ahead of Matsushita and the Trident car was setting some very quick laps and by lap 14 he had caught up with Jordan and he now had the advantage of DRS.
Ghiotto now began to make some serious efforts to pass the young Briton but Jordan was driving very well and taking defensive lines and ensuring he had good traction out of the corners to try and negate the DRS advantage of the Italian driver. Suddenly, as the cars entered the final five laps, Ghiotto began to slow as it seemed that his earlier fast laps had taken a toll on his tyres and on lap eighteen Jordan had opened out a lead of 2.5 seconds and he was now out of DRS range. With three laps remaining drops or rain began to fall and it soon got heavier and the lap times began to lengthen and on the final lap Ghiotto closed in again as Jordan battled with his car but, once again, he made no mistakes in the difficult conditions and he crossed the finishing line to win by 0.5 seconds.
Norman made a clean start but he was out-dragged into the first corner by Matsushita and he finished lap one in 3rd, 0.9 seconds behind the Japanese driver and 0.4 seconds ahead of Rowland. Over the next few laps the Racing Engineering driver held the gap to Matsushita at just over one second and he was just under a second ahead of Rowland but the top five drivers were all lapping in very similar times. On lap eight Rowland, who had closed in on Norman, passed the young Frenchman going into Stowe and Norman ran a little wide losing a further place to Ghiotto. Two laps later Norman lost a another position to Giovinazzi dropping to 6th and he was now 1.1 seconds ahead of Evans. By lap sixteen Evans had closed in on Norman but the Campos driver was battling with Marciello so he was having to make sure he made no mistakes and Norman began to pull away and he soon had a five second gap. However, with two laps to go and as the rain got harder, Norman lost control of his car and spun off the track and into the gravel where he retired.
It has been another mixed weekend for Racing Engineering with Jordan taking his second GP2 race win in two races, both in very tricky conditions, but Norman was only able to finish 7th on Saturday and he retired from Sunday’s race. The next race weekend in the 2016 GP2 Series will be in Hungary in two weeks’ time.QuotesSebastien Viger, Team Engineer:"A really good finish to the weekend after yesterday’s disappointment. The home win for Jordan was really special, he drove a very good race to come home in difficult conditions. It was a shame that Norman couldn’t finish the race but we intend to come back even stronger for the next race."
Norman Nato:"I started in P2 but the start was difficult as I was on the wrong side of the track and I dropped back to P3. It was OK to begin with but I began to struggle with the tyres so I backed off a little. With two or three laps to go I braked as normal but I lost control of the car and spun off, I am not sure what caused it so we will have to check it.”
Jordan King:"It’s so good to win on home soil. It was a tough race because of tyre wear so I managed the gap to the car behind and managed my tyres but then the British weather threw a spanner in the works and it began to rain but I did what I needed to do and relaxed when I needed to in order to win.”
