Andrew Jordan: “It isn’t fun waiting for an accident”

Former BTCC champion Andrew Jordan has hit out at driving standards in the series after finding himself on the wrong end of incidents in two of the three races at Silverstone.

The West Surrey Racing driver was one of the three drivers to be caught up in the accident that led to team-mate Rob Collard and Team HARD’s Will Burn being taken to hospital in the first race, and was then hit again in the second race and forced to pit with a puncture.

Although he then benefitted from another incident the final race to make up places from the back of the field, Jordan was critical of the driving standards displayed and said some of his rivals had shown a “lack of respect” on track.

“Usually when you are on track you know where you can and can’t put your car to avoid getting into trouble, but this weekend it’s just been about luck,” he said. “You were either in the right place and avoided it, or you got taken out – like we saw in race one. The driving standards have been a complete joke and there is a total lack of respect from some drivers – they have no class.

“If you look at Goodwood last weekend, you had people going wheel to wheel, there was no contact and the racing was absolutely brilliant. Here, we’ve seen accidents happen where there was absolutely no need for it. There’s no excuse for hitting someone on a straight and people have to accept sometimes that they need to give up a position and not just force others off the track.

“I’m not perfect and I’ve made mistakes in the past that I’ve held my hands up for, and I accept that contact happens; it’s part of motorsport. But I’m not sure what some people are doing at the moment. You look at the state of some of the cars at the end of the weekend and it’s embarrassing to see the amount of damage there is.”

The former champion added that drivers needed to take a look at themselves first in order to bring an end to a debate that has reared it’s head on a number of occasions this season.

“We need to sit down and take a long hard look at ourselves,” he said. “This might be a job for some of us, but it’s also meant to be fun and at the moment, it isn’t. There is nothing fun about going on track and wondering when you’re going to get hit again.

“That isn’t racing and if that’s what people want to do, then let’s go banger racing in Birmingham. But it needs to stop here because we’ve seen people getting hurt, and it isn’t on.”