Andrew Jordan ready to “play the long game” at Donington

Andrew Jordan says he will be focusing on the long game when the BTCC heads to his home circuit of Donington Park this weekend for the second meeting of the year.

The West Surrey Racing driver enjoyed a fine start to his campaign at Brands Hatch with victory on his first weekend at the wheel of the team’s BMW 125i M Sport, leaving him third in the championship standings.

The Pirtek backed driver currently sits just seven points shy of defending champion Gordon Shedden as best of the BMW drivers, but will now carry 57kg of success ballast into qualifying and race one.

With that in mind, the 27-year-old admitted that he expected the start of the weekend to be far from easy, but insisted that he was still confident of a strong haul of points to maintain his early season form.

“Having picked up a victory at Brands Hatch, I’m heading to Donington feeling relaxed and I think we are in a good position going into the weekend,” he said.

“Obviously we will be carrying some extra success ballast, which will make qualifying and race one more difficult given how close the field is this season, but luckily Donington is one of the better circuits to carry the weight as it is quite flowing and doesn’t feature a lot of stop/start corners.

“With that in mind, there is no reason why we can’t aim to come away from the weekend with more strong points on the board. Of course I want to be on the podium and challenging for victory, but it’s also important that we play the long game and focus on the championship as a whole.

“Things will ebb and flow throughout the season and we need to maximise our points at every opportunity. We showed at Brands Hatch that Pirtek BMW Racing will be right in the mix for the title and I want to build on those results at my home circuit and strengthen our position in the standings.”