Qualifying incident almost overshadows result

Dave Newsham’s pole position for Team ES Racing in yesterday’s BTCC qualifying session was almost completely overshadowed by an incident in the dying seconds of the session between Newsham’s team mate Chris James and Eurotech Racing’s Andrew Jordan.

Jordan, one of the last to cross the line before the chequered flag was waved was on a fast lap, which he had to abandon after coming up behind Chris James who was on his cool down lap on his way back to the pits.

Andrew Jordan had the following to say to TcT about the incident:
“He’s incompetent, didn’t look in his mirrors. It’s a known rule that if you have your lights then you are on a qualifying lap. I saw the footage and Chris had his lights on, I flashed him all the way up to Druids and flashed him all the way out of Druids. The easiest thing would have been for him to pull over to the left and then I could take the racing line into Graham Hill Bend, but he just pulls on to the line like a plonker.”

“I’m not saying we would have got pole but the incompetence of people like that annoys me. It’s not hard to look in your mirrors. All the good guys who see you have got your lights on will get out the way. There is no point not doing it because it will catch you out at some point. I think he is just so focused on driving the car and not going off.”

“We had made a change to the car and with a new car we are trying different things all the time. It felt better we had matched our best up to Druids so who know what would have happened. I’d been hoping for pole so I was a bit disappointed, but that overshadowed the session. I’m excited about the races and if we can come away with three top six finishes that would be a good weekend.”

While Chris James’ comments to TcT on the incident were as follows:
“It’s an absolute basic error in the fact that I had it called over on the radio that the chequered flag had gone out 20 seconds before the end of the session. The call was too early. I was deliberately slowing down, I saw Andrew and that he had his lights on and I can use mirrors. I thought it was the end of the session. It was totally and utterly the opposite of blatant. It was unintentional and obviously it did cause him a problem which I’m sorry about. I got called by the team manager session over and I was on a slowing down lap.”

“Obviously I can’t say too much about it but TOCA have had a word. They can see the data and saw I was slowing down. They are not happy but I have not been given a penalty of any points. The team has just got to get its communication right, it was a breakdown in communication. We are going to set it right and there were some discussion within the team last night shall we say because I’m the one who was getting it in the neck.”

“If it was in reverse I would be annoyed. Andrew has got every right to be annoyed but it wasn’t deliberate. He does his thing we do ours. If he wants to shake my hand and accept my apology then we can move on but we don’t have that great a relationship anyway. It does look worse with Dave Newsham being on pole but I assure you it wasn’t deliberate and it has taken a bit of the shine off of Dave’s pole. The real cynical people would think it was deliberate to stop Andrew and it just wasn’t it couldn’t be further from the truth. Andrew is a professional and I’m sure he won’t take it out on Dave.”