Andrew Jordan took his Pirtek Racing Honda Civic to a brace of second place finishes during rounds 10 and 11 of the 2012 British Touring Car Championship, while his weekend ended on a low note with a retirement in round 12.
Qualifying ahead of round 10 saw Jordan finish fourth fastest, having posted the fastest times in the first and third sector of the lap. He wound up 0.179s off Pole Position, and Jordan summarised: “Qualifying should have been pole by a tenth or two.”
Round 10, the first race after the six week break saw the #77 Honda Civic driver work his way up to second, after passing the BMW of Rob Collard at Island Hairpin. He then set off in pursuit of the Honda Yuasa Racing Team car of Matt Neal but was unable to take the lead from the triple Champion.
“I then gave chase after Matt and we’d got better pace because he’d got success ballast. I just couldn’t find a gap. But we needed a good points’ haul, so second place was good,” added Jordan.
Having followed Neal home in the opening race, he secured another second place finish in the second race of the day, this time behind the second Honda Yuasa Racing Team car of Gordon Shedden.
“Going up to Druids, I was tucked in behind Matt who had a problem in a straight line, so I hesitated. That gave Shedden the run on me and he went by,” added Jordan, who regained second when the leaders collided coming out of Island.
“I chased Shedden, but we had more weight by then and it hurt in the last few laps,” he said. “In the middle of the race I thought I had enough pace to have a go at him, but the last few laps hurt the front tyres a bit. But it was another good result and made two overall seconds and two Independent wins, which moved us up to fourth in the championship.”
For the final race, Jordan lined up eighth after the top nine drivers were reversed. Despite having a slight issue with the power steering, Jordan was confident of another top six finish.
“For the third race we had a slight problem with the power steering so I thought if we could get in the top six that would be okay,” concluded Jordan, who saw his race finish early after contact with another driver.
“I got eighth place in the grid draw and I was probably on target for the top six until Collard had a lunge down the inside at Old Hall. I gave him room because I saw him coming, but I think he carried too much speed into the corner and he ran me off the track on the exit of the corner and I hit the wall. It was quite a hard hit and it did quite a lot of damage. It was a bad end to what had been a really good day. It’s frustrating, but we’re still leading the Independents’ Trophy.”