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King targeting 2017 F1 race seat

Jordan King is targeting a race seat in F1 next season, with the Manor development driver keen to capitalise on a successful GP2 campaign.

In his second season in GP2, King has won two sprint races and currently sits seventh in the drivers' championship, 33 points off the lead. Having had experience driving for Manor during both in-season tests this year, when asked if the targets is to secure an F1 race seat in 2017, the 22-year-old told F1i: “Yeah.

"The childhood goal was to be Formula 1 World Champion, so to get into a race seat at some point has got to be on the path to achieve that and I feel the time is right to be moving up next year, that’s the goal.”

Manor is set to field Mercedes youngsters Pascal Wehrlein and Esteban Ocon for the remainder of this season, and while King was speaking before Ocon's confirmation, both drivers have already been linked to future seats with Force India and Renault respectively.

If King is to secure a race seat at Manor, he is hoping to gain some FP1 experience in the car at a grand prix this year.

“I’d love to. I don’t know, I’ve not had a phone call yet but I would love to have at least one or two Friday mornings if not more. I would love to do all of the Friday mornings left of the year but I don’t know.”

However, King is wary of putting too much emphasis on trying to get more F1 seat time but then not impressing in GP2 races.

“For me I’m focusing on GP2, I’m doing everything I can this year for that as a sideline. So if I win GP2 it makes it a lot easier for me to get a Formula 1 seat, whereas if I push Formula 1 and make sure I’ve done a Friday morning this year and miss out on the GP2 title it could be the wrong way round.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.