Andrew Jordan and the Pirtek Racing outfit left Brands Hatch after the opening rounds of the 2013 British Touring car Championship with a brace of podium finishes to their name.
Having been on the pace throughout the practice sessions, Jordan topped the times in the snow affected qualifying session. Having topped the times, Jordan’s time wasn’t beaten as he took his third pole position of his BTCC career.
“Qualifying was really good: We could see the snow coming and we knew we had to do it on the first run,” explains Jordan.
Starting from the front row of the grid for the opening race of the 2013 campaign, Jordan lost the lead towards the end of the opening lap to the Audi of Rob Austin and the MG of Jason Plato slid past.
“I got a really good start,” Jordan continues. “We knew that the MGs would be better than us on cold tyres and Rob Austin started on the soft tyres with his Audi. Austin got up the inside of me at McLaren and Plato followed him through.”
Having saved the tyres, Jordan was able to catch and pass Austin before chasing after the race leader, but his attempts to take the lead at the final corner resulted in Jordan visiting the gravel trap at McLeans.
“I got back past Austin and nibbled the gap down to Plato. I had a go at him on the last lap, but I misjudged it! Luckily we both managed to get out of the gravel,” Jordan added.
Lining up second for race two, Jordan held his position despite the attentions of the flying Gordon Shedden in the closing laps.
“Race two was pretty straightforward. Plato had more weight on, but he was still very strong. Gordon Shedden was coming up behind, but I think he’d taken too much out of his tyres,” added the 2012 Independents’ Champion.
The team had a double celebration in race 2 as Jeff Smith finished 4th, which became third after Shedden was excluded for a technical infringement.
Lining up sixth for the final race of the day, Jordan knew that the final race was going to be a damage limitation exercise as he had to carry 36kgs success ballast as well as running the new for 2013 soft tyres.
“The third race was about damage limitation after two good races,” Jordan said. “P6 was alright – I’d planned to try and get a top six as we now had more weight and that hurt the soft tyres we had to use in that race.”
Looking back at the weekend, Jordan is pleased with how it went and feels that we could win the Championship if he continues in that form.
“That’s a really good start to the season,” Jordan concluded. “If we could have ten weekends like this one, we could win the championship. The challenge now is to put nine more together. The car is very good but we need to keep working at it.”