Andrew Jordan took a trip down memory lane at Oulton Park yesterday (Wednesday 4th June) to drive two Super Touring cars.
The reigning champion swapped his Pirtek Racing Honda Civic for two iconic Super Touring machines in the shape of Jeff Allam’s Vauxhall Cavalier and Jason Plato’s Renault Laguna, owned by Mark Jones.
It didn’t take long for the current points leader to find his feet behind the wheel of both cars, with the Cavalier receiving nothing but praise from Jordan.
Comparing the two Super Tourers, Jordan said: “The Vauxhall’s great, I loved it. It was nice and friendly to drive, and the revs are the biggest thing that I noticed straight away. We now run a turbo which has a lot more low-down power, whereas with that you had to rev it and it’s really short-geared. The gearshift was lovely, although it works the other way than you would think – you push to go up, but that’s absolutely fine.
“It’s pretty much all the same stuff that my car’s got within reason. The suspension on my car’s rock-hard, but it just felt like a touring car should, really. The tyres are smaller than I’m used to now, still whilst it was damp and we were on wets, it still felt as if we had a good amount of grip.
“The Laguna felt much more on a knife edge,” he added. “It was very different to drive, it feels like it darts around, certainly a lot more on cold tyres. I felt like I was on my back foot with it, because it’s hard work even to stay on the straight. I’m sure as you get more used to it and the tyres come up to temperature it gets better, just it was a bit of a shock going from the Vauxhall to that and how different it actually felt.”
The Laguna that had taken Plato to several race victories had seen the engineering expertise of Williams F1 team at the time and Jordan admitted that the benefits of that were obvious compared to the Cavalier.
“I could see quite a difference between the cars,” he revealed. “You just have to look at how low and far back the engine is, the technology put into them. Big thanks for letting me have a go in one because I always wanted to drive my favourite Supertouring car. The fact it’s Jason Plato’s old car is pretty funny.”
With both eras of the BTCC set to pull a huge attendance to the Cheshire circuit on both Saturday and Sunday, Jordan has already admitted he will be heading to the support paddock and trackside to watch the practice sessions on Friday.
The Red Bull athlete said: “On Friday they’re testing, so the guys and I have said that we want to go down, look round and have a watch. Those sort of cars are what I grew up watching and playing on the computer games, so to have them racing on the same package is really cool.”
Both Super Touring races will be screened live with Saturday’s race featuring online immediately after BTCC qualifying at 16:00.
The championship leader is today at Donington Park with Triple Eight Race Engineering testing their BMW GT3 car.
PHOTO CREDIT: Jakob Ebrey Photography