Andrew Jordan pleased to return to podium at Rockingham

Andrew Jordan believes it’s “complete rubbish” that people “lose their mojo” after having a couple of disappointing weekends as he took his first BTCC podium in three meetings at Rockingham.

The reigning champion went two race meetings without a trip to the rostrum before scoring third in the final race of the day at Rockingham, after suffering a run of bad luck at both Snetterton and Knockhill.

“I find it quite typical that people think because you’ve had a couple of bad weekends apparently you lose your mojo,” Jordan told TouringCarTimes. “I think that’s complete rubbish. We’ve had a couple of bad weekends, that doesn’t mean I can’t drive any more.”

Jordan finished in the top six of all three races at Rockingham, which were dominated by the rear-wheel drive machines of Colin Turkington in the first two races and Rob Austin from the reverse grid final race. Jordan held off Turkington in race three to hold on to third and take his first bit of silverware since winning the third race at Croft.

“I wasn’t going to give up a fight just because it was Colin in a RWD car. I saw him on lap one I knew it was going to be tricky, but I thought he wouldn’t take too many risks but equally he had Mat (Jackson) right behind him so I thought he’d want to get in clear air. But we had him covered where we needed to. It’s great to take some silverware back again, it’s been two weekends but it feels like a lot to me.

“I think it’s really important not to get too negative when you have a bad couple of weekends. Everyone has them, last year I had a great run of luck, I’m well aware of that so I can’t be bitter when we have a bit of bad luck this year.”

The Eurotech team gambled on their tyre strategy at the Corby circuit, deciding to run the softer rubber in the second race, which Jordan used to its full potential despite being pushed down to tenth on the opening lap.

“I think it was the right choice [going for the softs in race two],” continued Jordan “We gambled, we came from tenth to fourth after lap one in race two and the pace was great. I had to use the softs more than I wanted to early on, getting past some of the people that had overtaken me. I think if we ended lap one in the top five we’d have been in a stronger position. We wouldn’t have touched Colin but I’m sure we could’ve touched the MGs, but that’s the way it goes.”

Moving in to the closing stages of the season, Jordan is well aware that the penultimate round at Silverstone will not be an easy one, and instead has his eyes set firmly on ending the season on a high at the Brands Hatch GP season finale.

“I don’t know about Silverstone, that’s going to hurt the Hondas in general,” he said. “We’ve been the quicker of the Hondas all weekend – although qualifying Shedden pipped us – but Hondas are going to struggle in general with straight line performance. It’s been the same for a few years but that being said I had a great race with Jason there, a great battle for a win there last year. There’s probably more people that can get in between us as the competition’s deeper this year. That might be a bit more tricky but in qualifying the Hondas will struggle.

“Going to Brands GP there’ll be no pressure, the pressure will be on the championship guys. I love going to Brands GP so if I had to pick a place to probably be on the podium it’d probably be Brands and not Silverstone.”