Andrew Jordan admitted that, despite enduring a frustrating weekend at Oulton Park, it was important to take away the positives from the triple header in Cheshire, most prominently the fact he now leads the Independent standings.
After a successful meeting at Thruxton in which both Jordan and Jackson claimed race victories, the 2.2 mile Island circuit brought Motorbase Performance back to earth with a bump on Saturday afternoon as the duo could only manage 12th and 25th respectively.
Jordan managed to progress two places higher during the first encounter to claim tenth, before claiming 8th in the second contest and just missing out on the reverse grid pole position, which duly went the way of Matt Neal. Despite the disappointment, Jordan marked a landmark 250th race in the British Touring Car Championship with another 8th place, completing a hat-trick of points scoring finishes.
The championship permutations of Jordan’s weekend see the 2013 series winner now sitting in 6th overall, some 37 points adrift of new standings leader, Sam Tordoff. However, in the Independents category, Jordan now enjoys a 14 point lead over WIX Racing’s Adam Morgan after he suffered a nightmare weekend in the north.
Speaking after the dust had settled at Oulton Park, Jordan admits he feels like a disparity in engine performance between the standard TOCA engines, constructed by Swindon, and the Mountune engines that Motorbase run on the Ford Focus ST is partly at fault for his pace.
“This weekend has been very frustrating, especially coming off what we had at Thruxton.” he admitted.
“It’s hard enough to progress on this track but with so much difference between us and the Swindon engines I just feel like we’ve had to fight with one arm behind our back all weekend. Oulton is a stop start circuit so it’s just amplified the difference, but racing against them they’re pulling 3 or 4 lengths away from us coming out of Lodge and the hairpin.”
However despite the problems he believes the car was in a strong place and the results fail to do the Pirtek Racing machine justice, and hopes the issues can be rectified before the series next reconvenes at Croft in two weeks time [18th-19th June].
“I’m happy with our performance all weekend so it’s really frustrating to not get the results to show that. All things considered I think we’ve done a good job with what we’ve had but it’s not a fair reflection on the team. I just hope it gets looked at before we get to Croft.”
Jordan also admitted that his natural objective is to reclaim the title he last won three seasons ago, however he was satisfied with the consistency of his results after a difficult season with MG last year, and is happy he and the team were able to take the lead of the Independent standings despite a difficult weekend.
“Taking the positives from the weekend; having won the overall championship, the aim is always to win again but to be leading the Independents championship here after such a tough day just shows the consistency in our results so far.”