BMW Pirtek Racing’s Andrew Jordan says the encouraging pace of his BMW 125i M Sport during British Touring Car Championship practice at Silverstone was “more than he’d hoped for.”
The 2013 champion placed fourth in the opening practice session before narrowly missing out on going fastest in the second behind Team HARD’s Mike Bushell.
Jordan told TouringCars.Net his BMW has felt strong since arriving at the circuit, and that he expected to struggle more in terms of pace.
“Yeah car feels good – it’s felt good since we rolled out of the truck,” said Jordan. “Fourth in practice one, second in practice two – we obviously don’t know what people have done on tyres and how much they’ve got left up their sleeves.
“But I think if we do a lap like that we should be somewhere near in qualifying, which is more than we’d hoped for coming here really.
“I thought we’d struggle a bit more. But let’s see where we end up in qualifying and then we can go from there.”
By virtue of his practice pace, Jordan has opted to change nothing on the car in terms of setup before qualifying.
“We’ve changed nothing,” he said. “We changed a bit between FP1 and FP2, and then since practice two we haven’t changed anything on it to qualify with.
“So we’ve just polished it and I’ll see what I can do a bit differently in terms of the driving.”
Despite being surprised at his BMW’s pace on the 1.639-mile national layout, Jordan admits he is unsure with regards to his competition’s true pace, as he feels many were using old tyres in practice.
“I know where we are and that’s all we can really worry about,” said Jordan. “We can’t worry about how much the others might find in qualifying trim or anything like that.
“We should be somewhere near – I’m confident of that – but obviously we don’t know exactly how high we’ll be until after the session.
“The car feels really good and I’m comfortable with it.”