Andrew Jordan described his Rockingham races as ‘one of the most frustrating weekends I’ve had’ after the BMW Pirtek Racing driver missed out on the top ten in last weekend’s British Touring Car Championship races.
Jordan had felt buoyed by his performance on Saturday after ending up as the best-placed BMW driver in qualifying, starting race one from 11th on the grid.
But his weekend stalled thereafter, with Jordan having to avoid another car on the first lap of the opening race, dropping him to the rear of the field.
Jordan ultimately recovered to take 15th and a single point in the first encounter. Race two then saw Jordan make limited ground to finish in 13th.
Race three looked promising for Jordan on the prime tyre, but contact with Tom Chilton’s recovering Motorbase car on the first lap of the opening race broke his suspension and ended his chance of a result.
“I think that weekend is right up there as one of the most frustrating I’ve had,” said Jordan. “We put in a solid performance in qualifying when you consider how close the times were, and we knew going into race day that we had the chance to pick up some strong results with the pace we had shown in the car through practice.
“Unfortunately, it all went wrong at the start of the first race through no fault of own and from that point on, we were on the back foot.
“Fighting back to get into the points in race one showed what might have been, and then I have no doubt at all that we could have pushed for victory in the final race after the start we made.
“I don’t blame Tom for what happened [in race three] as the conditions were very tricky and he was simply trying to get his car back on track and didn’t know I was there – I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time again.”
The lack of strong results has dropped Jordan to ninth in the drivers’ championship standings, 59 points from the top of the table. A silver lining for Jordan is that gives him just 15 kg of success ballast heading to Scotland.
“Whilst we’ve missed out on what could have been a decent points score, we now go to Knockhill carrying less weight on the car at one of the strongest circuits on the calendar.
“I’m going to be going there with one aim and that is to bring home some podiums and get myself back into title contention.”