Andrew Jordan and Pirtek Racing will head to the Croft circuit in North Yorkshire (June 28/29) to resume their title challenge during rounds 13, 14 and 15 of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship.
The challenging track near Darlington is another hugely popular date on the BTCC calendar and always attracts a huge crowd of north-eastern fans and Andrew heads north determined to bounce back into the title race after a tough weekend last time out at Oulton Park. Then, an interrupted qualifying session started a weekend when the Pirtek Racing Honda Civic did not have its usual front-running pace and could only take a best finish of eighth place.
By the end of the final race at Oulton Park, Andrew had slipped to third place in the championship points behind Colin Turkington (BMW) and Gordon Shedden (Honda), but he immediately pledged to be right back into contention at Croft, a track where he has traditionally gone well and has won races before.
“Oulton Park was a poor weekend, but we’re not going to panic about it,” said Andrew. “It all stemmed from being in the wrong place at the wrong time in qualifying.” Andrew and the Pirtek team know that across the 10-event, 30-race BTCC schedule there will be weekends that don’t deliver the expected results and drivers like former champion Matt Neal suffered an even tougher weekend at Oulton Park.
Now, Andrew will prepare for Croft, which combines bumpy high-speed sections with slower technical complexes and for the first time since the opening race weekend of the season the Pirtek Honda will be carrying a reduced amount of success ballast. “We’ll have 27kg for Croft for being in third place in the championship, so that will be the lightest the car has been for a while,” he said. “I think we learned a bit at Oulton Park about what we need to do at Croft.”
He says it is important to remain focused and bounce back strongly at Croft, which will be the final race weekend of the first half of the season and leads into a six-week mid-season break. “There is a long way to go in this championship and we’ve not had a weekend like Oulton Park since 2012. It makes you appreciate the good ones more. We’ll just get our heads down and work hard to be back stronger for Croft.”
After qualifying on Saturday 28 June at 15.45, the first of three BTCC races will be at 12.00 on Sunday, with race two at 14.40 and race three at 17.05. All three races will be broadcast live on ITV4. Qualifying will be broadcast live at www.itv.com and live results from the weekend will be available at www.tsl-timing.com
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