F2: Jordan King on Raghunathan: “I Think he’s Doing a Very Good Job”

As FIA Formula 2, like F1 returns from its summer break at Spa-Francorchamps, Jordan King spoke to Motorsport Radio about his year back in the category, including his off-track relationship with MP Motorsport teammate Mahaveer Raghunathan.

So far this season, King has scored the teams only podium as well as all the teams points, helping them to seventh in the teams standings, with the Brit sitting tenth overall. Despite King’s success, Raghunathan has struggled in his opening season with his best result being an 11th at Baku.

“I’ve had a really good relationship with him, trying to help him improve. He’s done a really good job to be honest. If you look at his racing experience, he’s not got a lot.

Raghunathan was forced to sit out the Austrian round after accumulating 12 penalty points on his racing licence, which included nine in one race at Paul Ricard.

“Four, five years ago, I wasn’t ready to jump into GP2 and compete. So to have the courage to get in and be able to get in and go, is something to be impressed with. Obviously there’s still room for improvement, but he’s not crashed into people or himself much.

“He’s made a few mistakes, but a lot of those were small, silly things, so overall I think he’s doing a very good job actually. It is tough to jump into these cars and shows you how hard the championship is and how prepared and ready you need to be. He missed winter testing, so was already on the backfoot, but at Silverstone Mahaveer was not far off and actually competing with the competition at the back of the grid.”

His nine points in France came after the stewards found he failed to observe the Virtual Safety Car procedure on three separate occasions.

Speaking about his goals for the rest of the year, King was clear about not having lofty expectations and reiterated his desire to work closesly with MP.

“For me it was never about going for the championship, that wasn’t why I was doing it, but the overall goal for me is to help the team move forward and improve the car. If I can get some results, show what everyone can achieve and everyone’s happy, then it’d be mission accomplished.” – Jordan King.

FIA F2 returns for the first of their final four rounds this weekend, with Nyck de Vries leading the standings by 30 points, as EuroFormula Open series leader Marino Sato replaces Arjun Maini at Campos Racing.