Andrew Jordan: Did I expect to come away with two wins? Definitely not
Coming off of Donington Park we were hoping for a weekend that would bring the confidence back, but after a weekend like that you put more pressure on yourself to score big points, to get back on track. Amazingly, though, what we got was exactly what we needed.
The car felt great right from the off, but did I expect to come away with two wins? Definitely not. It was a very satisfying weekend.
We were in the ballpark in terms of setup all weekend. From the moment I rolled out in FP1 it just felt like we were on to a winner. We were top three in both qualifying sessions, second in FP1 and third in FP2. It’s always difficult to tell the genuine pace, especially in FP1 as people play games nowadays, rarely showing their true hands, so you never know how you’re going to end up when the green lights go for qualifying. All we needed was a little fine tuning – we could have made some big changes but I didn’t want to, just in case we went the wrong way.
Qualifying went well and we found ourselves lining up on the second row of the grid in third. The track limits regulations are a little confusing at the final chicane, with the sausage kerbs, the floppy bollards and the coloured tarmac, but I think everyone was taking it quite pedestrian through there – it was much easier to define where the limit was on race day when they put the tyre stack on the inside of the chicane.
Starting third I thought there was a good chance of a strong result, but my start wasn’t all that great. Sam Tordoff got off the line from pole really well, so I settled in behind him. I thought that second would be a cracking way to kick off the day, so I wasn’t going to try anything stupid. He then made a small mistake going around Church and I took my chance.
Having made the move with just three laps to go I just kept it tidy and managed to pull a little gap to take my second win of the year.
It’s a bit of a strange mentality after winning the first race, as you go into races two and three just wishing for some more solid points. With my team-mate Colin Turkington settling in behind me, I felt comfortable. You know when your team-mate is behind you that they’re not going to try anything stupid, but you also have that added pressure of knowing that the one guy you want to beat more than any is sitting behind you!
I managed to establish a gap and control the race, which was good as I wanted to save the tyres for the end of the race. There was the added threat of rain, which is always tricky when you’re leading – you’re the first one to get to each corner and you’re a bit of a guinea pig. Luckily it was never anything more than a bit of drizzle and we pulled through for a great BMW 1-2.
That win was a real sweet one. To win the race with full ballast, and to lead home a 1-2 was great.
When they did the reverse grid for race three, I could have cried – pulling out 11 at Thruxton was always going to give me a tough final race of the day. If they’d pulled out number six I probably could have stayed in the top six, but with number 11, I was hoping for a top 10 result at best.
Rob Collard had a bit of an incident at the complex on lap one, which dropped me back a little bit, and the field was then bunched up by the resulting Safety Car period. Unfortunately, on the restart I got spun round by Stephen Jelley and it dropped me to the back of the pack, which was incredibly frustrating.
Fair play to Stephen, though, he came into our truck after the race to hold his hands up and apologise for the move. I wasn’t going to start shouting about it – what’s the point? It was frustrating, it was never going to work, but it happened, and that’s that. What’s done is done and at least he’s apologised – there are a lot of drivers out there who wouldn’t hold their hands up at all.
Despite a less-than-perfect end to the day, it was a very strong weekend. We came away as the highest scoring driver, and I’ve taken three victories out of a possible nine, which is fantastic at this stage of the year. If you look even deeper at the stats, we’ve only finished six races this year, and out of those six, three have been wins – and those three wins have been our only points finishes, too! It’s not the ideal stat to have, but our win/finish rate is incredibly promising.
We’ve got some great momentum going to Croft, but I’m not counting on it. We had great momentum after Brands and look what happened at Donington. Historically Croft has been great for rear-wheel-drive cars, but it’s been resurfaced this year, so no-one really knows how it’s going to react and the old form book could get thrown out of the window.
All in all this was a great confidence boosting weekend, and the car feels just brilliant.