Andrew Jordan: BTCC 2017, Croft – "A lucky escape and plenty of valuable points"

The first free-practice session was a bit of a meaningless washout, with lap times not representative. I had a fair bit of oversteer in the car so we made some tweaks ahead of second practice and it was much better; so much so that I was initially fourth quickest before being bumped down to sixth.

With that sort of benchmark I was intent on securing a top-six grid slot for the first race. And that’s when things began to unravel. I still had a bit of oversteer and then got caught up in the scary smash at the back of the circuit caused when Luke Davenport lost oil which, combined with the wet track, made for a nightmare scenario. I spun and glanced off Luke’s stationary car, which inflicted the damage. We all, of course, wish Luke a speedy recovery from some nasty injuries after his car was subsequently hit very hard.

With qualifying cancelled for the clear-up operation, I was in 14^th place, which would become 12^th when two drivers failed to start. As well as that, the West Surrey boys had an all-nighter on their hands to reshape the car! One of the guys brought parts up from the base in Sunbury-on-Thames to Croft, arriving at 1am! They all did a superb job, stopping for a few hours’ sleep at 4am and returning to finish off at 7am.

It meant my car was race-ready for Sunday morning – further confirmation that I really did dodge a bullet. I had to treat the race as a damage-limitation exercise, especially as I hadn’t driven the BMW in the dry at Croft. 

As it turned out, the pace was OK and I moved up to sixth place, which earned me a respectful 10 points. That certainly fired me up for race two.

We tried a few things on the car between the two races in a bid to dial out more of the oversteer. I certainly thought that a podium challenge was on from sixth on the grid. It didn’t work out quite like that but I did get fifth – and another 11 points – after fending off a spirited attack from Jason Plato. It was fun racing JP, actually, and I had to go ultra-defensive to keep the revitalised Subaru behind. 

The oversteer was still there for the third and final race which gave me less confidence for high-speed corner entry and at the mid-point, but a seventh-placed finish, between the other WSR BMWs of Colin Turkington and Rob Collard, landed me a third points-finish of the day, which can’t be sniffed at.

There are two ways of analysing the weekend: you could say that every racing lap I did and point I scored was a bonus after what happened in qualifying, and the effort the WSR boys had to put in. Conversely, there were so many missed opportunities; I really should’ve been further up at the sharp end. In truth, I’m taking the positives from having scored in every race, when it could’ve been so much worse.

We’re into the summer break now, before the second half of the season kicks in at the end of July. The team and I will be doing a lot of work behind the scenes to make sure we come out fighting for the remaining five rounds. That’s 15 more races – at Snetterton, Knockhill, Rockingham, Silverstone and Brands Hatch – to push hard for more wins and move up that championship table.