King asserts his authority with dominant weekend
The Ginetta GT4 Supercup title fight might have been close coming into the weekend but its destiny was rarely in doubt as Harry King dominated the races.
King’s closest challenger, Will Burns, boosted his own chances by claiming pole position by just 0.05 seconds on a drying track. But, in worsening conditions, King pulled off a breathtaking outside pass at Graham Hill Bend on the opening lap of a crushing 11s win.
Burns was best of the rest but admitted he “had no answer” to King with too stiff a set-up, adding that the margin of victory was “a bit embarrassing”.
The order was unchanged in race two, but Burns was at least able to keep his Rob Boston Racing car in touch with King’s Elite Motorsport-prepared machine to set up a title decider. Realistically, Burns needed to win the reversed-grid race with King outside the top six. Starting together on row three, the pair benefited from the absence of front-row men Fin Green and James Blake-baldwin but, perversely, that probably made Burns’s job harder.
Behind leader Tom Hibbert, King dived inside Simon Rudd for second, with Burns also passing Rudd. On the resumption after a lengthy safety-car period, Burns latched on to King and passed him into Surtees on the final lap, but could not catch pre-weekend title outsider Hibbert.
“It feels awesome to finally get a car racing championship to my name,” said 18-year-old King. “When you do get two or three wins on the bounce, it’s easy to get distracted and think you can go into weekends without the same preparation and do well, but I’ve been putting in so much work outside the track.”
For Burns, it was a second final-round defeat in three years after losing out to Tom Wrigley in 2016. But while
Wrigley let his 24-point lead slip to just three, King was resolute.
“I was putting loads of pressure on Tom Wrigley and I think he was struggling a bit, but Harry seems to hold his head,” said Burns, whose grace in defeat typified a hard-fought contest with no ill feeling.