PRODUCTIVE PRE-SEASON TEST SESSION FOR JORDAN DUO

News release date: Monday 18 February 2008

Pirtek racing drivers Mike and Andrew Jordan are making excellent progress in their pre-season testing programme ahead of the 2008 HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship.

While other teams are still finalising drivers liner-ups and building cars, the Team Eurotech duo has been busy testing and Andrew has now had very productive test days at Rockingham and twice at Brands Hatch. Andrew was joined by his father Mike in the most recent test day at Brands on Wednesday (13 February), as Mike gave his freshly rebuilt Honda Integra a shakedown test.

Two weeks earlier, both drivers had driven the Honda that Andrew will be racing this season and, on the same tyres, recorded virtually the same lap time, posting best laps within two-hundredths of a second of each other.

This week, Andrew was able to build on the experience of the previous Brands test and was pleased to be three-tenths of a second faster, despite a track that was busy with slower cars. "I then did a race-distance run and the pace was good," said Andrew. "That was important, as it helped me learn about how tyre performance changes across a race distance."

While Andrew completed nearly 100 laps, Mike ran around 30 laps as he settled in to his rebuilt car. Now, Mike and Andrew will prepare for their next scheduled test day at Silverstone at the end of February.

Meanwhile, the spectacular TV package for the coming BTCC season has been confirmed as part of a new three-year deal with ITV. A season total of 46 hours of live air time will be devoted by ITV4 to the BTCC plus a further ten hours of highlights, which will be broadcast on the weekend following each event in hour-long programmes.

Extending the reach of the championship even further, ITV1, Britain's largest commercial terrestrial network, will also broadcast a one-hour highlights programme on the Monday night after each event. Its sister digital station Men & Motors will schedule that same programme during the week following each event.

This gives the BTCC a massive total of some 76 hours of UK broadcasting, across both the digital and terrestrial ITV networks, making it the most significant UK TV broadcast arrangement in the championship's long history.

2008 BTCC live transmission times on ITV4 are:
Brands Hatch, 30 March, 12.30pm-5.30pm
Rockingham, 13 April, 12.30pm-5.30pm
Donington Park, 4 May, 12.30pm-5.30pm
Thruxton, 18 May, 12.30pm-5.30pm
Croft, 1 June, 12.30pm-5.30pm
Snetterton, 13 July, 12.30pm-2.30pm and 5pm-6pm
Oulton Park, 27 July, 12.30pm-2.30pm and 5pm-6pm
Knockhill, 17 August, 12.30pm-5.30pm
Silverstone, 31 August, 12.30pm-5.30pm
Brands Hatch, 21 September, 12.30pm-5.30pm