Nurburgring British F3: Jordan King takes double pole for decider

Englishman King pipped his closest title rival, Will Buller, by just a tenth of a second after overhauling the Northern Irishman when everyone ran their second set of tyres.

It completed a perfect day for King, whose Carlin Dallara-Volkswagen topped both free practice sessions in the morning, the first of which was run in the wet and the second in the damp.

"I can't complain too much with that," said King. "On my first set of tyres I probably didn't get the best out of them straight away, so I had to work quite hard on my second set but I managed to find the time.

"It's all to play for, although I'd have liked Will to be a little bit further down!"

After a test at Anglesey, Buller felt that he had cracked his qualifying maladies since returning to the Fortec Motorsport team and put in by far his most convincing pace to date this year.

"I'm pretty happy with the car, although the second set of tyres didn't go to plan and I didn't find any time on them," said Buller, who will start from the front row for the first and third races.

The other man in with a realistic shout of the title, Antonio Giovinazzi, lapped third quickest in his Double R Racing machine, narrowly edging out the Carlin pair of Nicholas Latifi and Jann Mardenborough. Felipe Guimaraes completes the top six.

As expected, Sun Zheng - who cannot be caught in the points by any of his rivals at the Nurburgring - topped the National Class in his CF Racing Dallara-Mugen Honda.

Race one grid:

Pos  Driver              Team/Car                 Time       Gap
 1.  Jordan King         Carlin Dallara-VW        1m49.947s
 2.  Will Buller         Fortec Dallara-Merc      1m50.314s  +0.367s
 3.  Antonio Giovinazzi  Double R Dallara-Merc    1m50.595s  +0.648s
 4.  Jann Mardenborough  Carlin Dallara-VW        1m50.626s  +0.679s
 5.  Nicholas Latifi     Carlin Dallara-VW        1m50.900s  +0.953s
 6.  Felipe Guimaraes    Fortec Dallara-Merc      1m50.935s  +0.988s
 7.  Spike Goddard       T-Sport Dallara-Nissan   1m51.413s  +1.466s
 8.  Tatiana Calderon    Double R Dallara-Merc    1m51.737s  +1.790s
 9.  Sean Gelael         Double R Dallara-Merc    1m52.095s  +2.148s
10.  Alfonso Celis       Fortec Dallara-Merc      1m52.511s  +2.564s
11.  Zheng Sun           CF Dallara-Mugen         1m53.972s  +4.025s*
12.  Chris Vlok          West-Tec Dallara-Toyota  1m54.942s  +4.995s*
13.  Will Barbosa        West-Tec Dallara-Toyota  1m58.751s  +8.804s*

* National class

Race three grid:

Pos  Driver              Team/Car                 Time       Gap
 1.  Jordan King         Carlin Dallara-VW        1m49.905s
 2.  Will Buller         Fortec Dallara-Merc      1m50.017s  +0.112s
 3.  Antonio Giovinazzi  Double R Dallara-Merc    1m50.463s  +0.558s
 4.  Nicholas Latifi     Carlin Dallara-VW        1m50.485s  +0.580s
 5.  Jann Mardenborough  Carlin Dallara-VW        1m50.582s  +0.677s
 6.  Felipe Guimaraes    Fortec Dallara-Merc      1m50.870s  +0.965s
 7.  Spike Goddard       T-Sport Dallara-Nissan   1m51.164s  +1.259s
 8.  Tatiana Calderon    Double R Dallara-Merc    1m51.445s  +1.540s
 9.  Sean Gelael         Double R Dallara-Merc    1m51.719s  +1.814s
10.  Alfonso Celis       Fortec Dallara-Merc      1m52.123s  +2.218s
11.  Zheng Sun           CF Dallara-Mugen         1m53.559s  +3.654s*
12.  Chris Vlok          West-Tec Dallara-Toyota  1m54.897s  +4.992s*
13.  Will Barbosa        West-Tec Dallara-Toyota  1m58.440s  +8.535s*

*National class

Race two grid is partially reversed race one result