Both Andrew Jordan and Mat Jackson were in an optimistic mood after the opening three rounds of the new Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship season, with the Motorbase Performance duo picking up four top eight finishes.
The team were arguably the standout performers of the second half of last season, with Jackson claiming a quartet of race wins in the five meetings he contested. The addition of 2013 champion Jordan to the Kent-based team caused excitement during the off-season, and the Brands Hatch opener was arguably the closest spectators have come to seeing ‘the Jordan of old’ in two seasons.
Jackson explained that qualifying around the 1.2 mile Indy circuit had been frustrating, but was pleased with the pace and racecraft he was able to demonstrate in each of Sunday [3rd April]’s three races.
“I think it’s fair to say that we struggled a little bit in qualifying. It would have been nice to have been higher but we’ve worked away all weekend to try and drag more time out of the car and we’ve achieved that,” commented Jackson
“Overall we’ve had a good result this weekend. The pace is definitely in the car. If we hadn’t have got the puncture in race 3 then I think we would have been challenging for the win, unfortunately that wasn’t the case. It’s obviously very frustrating but we’ve made progress with the car and we showed in race 3 that we’re competitive.”
Team-mate Jordan concurred on the subject of qualifying and in particular felt that, had race one panned out differently, he could have made multiple trips to the podium over the weekend.
“Qualifying was obviously disappointing and then having an issue in race 1 hampered our results but from there we managed to turn it around to get two fourths and some good points. In general it started off not that great a weekend but actually came good today and I think if we hadn’t have had the issue in race 1 then we would have had three decent results and possibly a podium.
Jordan also believes there is more performance to be extracted from the car between now and the next three rounds, which take place at Donington Park on the 16th-17th April.
“We’re not quite there on the ultimate pace with the car but we’re moving in the right way and we have a plan to work to heading to Donington.”