Despite no victories to his name so far in the 2018 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship, Andrew Jordan has seen consistency as key in his push towards a second drivers title.
The 2013 champion in his BMW Pirtek Racing 125i M Sport secured another load of points last time out at Snetterton making him a dark horse for the overall honours come the end of the year.
With ballast on board, the first qualifying saw him set a time only good enough for eleventh. However, in the second qualifying for the ballast free Diamond Double event, AJ’s fastest time placed him a competitive sixth on the grid.
Rain in the first race should have made things interesting, but for Andrew who ultimately ended up the best of the BMW’s finished one place below his starting position in twelfth.
Race two in greasy conditions was slightly better as he ran in the top ten for most of the race. The Sutton Coldfield based driver earned seven points with his ninth place finish.
Finally, to the Diamond Double with its special double points reward. If victory was unobtainable, to be able to score strongly was certainly a game plan for most drivers including Andrew.
Working his way into fourth place, the pace of the three leading drivers was too much for AJ to overcome therefore the fourth place was consolidated at the flag and twenty-six points bagged.
Andrew now lies sixth in the drivers table on equal points with Josh Cook in fifth and only thirty-two points behind Tom Ingram in first.
Despite consistency, Jordan still knows there is room for improvement,
“We’ve closed the gap to the points lead this weekend by being consistent. As a team, we haven’t quite had the pace on race day with the changeable conditions and in race one in particular, it was damage limitation on the wets.
“On the soft tyre in race two, we struggled a bit on the damp part of the circuit and we had to make a decision over which way to go with the set-up for race three.
“Ultimately we went a bit too soft for the conditions as the rain didn’t come down like we thought it would do, but to finish up with a fourth place allowed us to put some good points on the board to end the weekend.
“We lose some weight for Rockingham next out and we have to go there focused on pushing for podiums to bring the points gap down again.
“Although I think there is an element of this weekend being a missed opportunity because of the conditions that the weather threw at us, we’re moving in the right direction in the title race.”
