Pirtek Racing’s Andrew Jordan won a thrilling second British Touring Car Championship race of the day at Snetterton, as Honda found their form and MG stuttered.
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In an eventful race, Jordan was one of four drivers to lead the race at different points, making contact with Colin Turkington into Williams heading onto the Bentley straight to grab the lead with three laps to go.
Matt Neal put his troubles from the first race behind him with a fine second place, ahead of Árón Smith in his Airwaves Ford Focus.
It was Turkington and Plato who made impressive starts to the race, with Plato grabbing the lead from teammate Tordoff off the line and Turkington muscling his was past the race one winner into the hairpin.
Plato had already made a break for it, but his charge was halted after David Nye hit Liam Griffin, sending the Motorbase driver into the gravel trap and forcing the Safety Car to be deployed.
Plato again sprinted away at the front when the racing restarted on lap five, but by the end of the lap he was pulling into the pitlane with a fuel pump problem, leaving Turkington and Tordoff to tussle for the lead.
Turkington’s defensive style allowed those in pursuit to catch up to the back of the leading duo, with Andrew Jordan pulling ahead of Tordoff into Montreal after a similar move to dispatch Gordon Shedden a few laps earlier.
From there Tordoff’s hopes of repeating his feat from the morning faded, as he eventually finished down in 18th place after running off the circuit several times.
Jordan signaled his intent with his headlights on full beam, and forced his way down the inside of Turkington at Williams, causing the eBay Motors driver to take avoiding action and subsequently drop position. It was a bad couple of corners for the team, as Rob Collard was forced out of the race after contact in the leading group.
Jordan controlled the race from there, with Smith, who had used the hold up to carve his way to the front, resisting the temptations of Neal’s Honda behind. Neal did eventually work his way round the Focus on the final lap, but it nonetheless marked Airwaves’ best performance of the season, with Mat Jackson enjoying a fruitful run to fourth.
Adam Morgan kept his nose clean to chalk up a fine fifth place finish, ahead of the frustrated figures of Collard and Shedden, both of whom had been forced down the order.
After finishing eighth, Dave Newsham will start the third race of the day from pole after his name was drawn by Jack Sears, while there was a second class win of the day for Lea Wood in the S2000 class which also yielded his first points of the season in 13th place, ahead of Rob Austin who was on for a top ten finish and Robb Holland, scoring his first points since his return to the series.
Round 18 takes place at 17:02 BST.