Andrew Jordan believes he has the pace to challenge for pole in qualifying for the British Touring Car Championship at Knockhill, after the BMW Pirtek Racing driver topped second practice on Saturday.
Jordan posted the quickest time of the day so far in the second practice session, lapping in 51.185 seconds to pip Honda’s Dan Cammish by less than a tenth of a second.
Carrying just 9 kg of success ballast and in the more favoured rear-wheel drive BMW around the short undulating circuit, Jordan believes he can continue his pace and momentum into qualifying.
His pace was in part down to running new tyres, but much of the BTCC field are using fresh rubber on Saturday due to the impending heavy rain forecast throughout Sunday.
“I think most people are running fresh tyres as tomorrow is going to be wet,” said Jordan to TouringCars.Net. “But we’re in the ballpark and we’re making a few little changes, nothing massive and we’re where we need to be.
“We need to find a little bit more pace, but sometimes trying to find that last little bit is the hardest bit. I’m sure we’ll be there or thereabouts.
“I think we should challenge for pole. I’d be disappointed if we don’t, but you just don’t know what everyone else has done in free practice two: what engine performance they’ve run or what tyres and so on.
“All we can focus on is just trying to fettle this a little bit more to try and get a little bit more performance out of the car and out of me and see where we get to with it.
“I think we’re in a position to qualify and race well, but I don’t think about the championship too much now.
“We should be strong here over qualifying and a race distance, which we’ve not been able to do recently, so I think we’ll be strong and we’ll see where we get to.”