Andrew Jordan admitted that victory in the third British Touring Car Championship race at Rockingham felt particularly ‘sweet’ after enduring bad luck in earlier events in the season.
Rockingham marked the first time since Croft that Jordan finished all three races in the points, after he had a win snatched out of his hands in the final race at Snetterton due to mechanical failure and suffered a retirement at Knockhill when he was involved in a race two shunt.
Jordan says that taking victory – this third of the season – after his previous bad luck made the win feel even better.
“In a sense, a bad Snetterton and a bad Knockhill just makes this feel sweeter, because it just feels great,” said Jordan. “We’ve done a good job collectively this weekend.”
The BMW racer didn’t have it all his own way in the race though, as he had to defend his lead late in the race when a safety car intervention wiped out his near two-second lead over Adam Morgan.
In the end a strong restart saw Jordan get a comfortable gap over Morgan and he was able to secure the win.
“As soon as I got on the power [at the restart] I saw the gap [to Morgan] and thought that I’d just to a nice neat and tidy chicane. Then I just knew all I had to do was take it steady and cruise for two laps.”
Jordan also believes he did the right thing in the second race of the day in not letting team-mate and title contender Rob Collard past, as it allowed him to ultimately secure the reverse-grid pole and have the best chance of victory.
“I race for myself – I’m not stupid, and I’m sensible,” added Jordan when asked by TouringCars.Net if he should have played the team-game and let Collard past. “If I just rolled over then I wouldn’t have got the reverse grid and I wouldn’t have won this race.
“There have been times this year when I’ve been helpful, but [this time] I needed to not roll over and I needed to get stuck in as well.”