Taste of super touring for reigning champion Jordan

Reigning BTCC champion Andrew Jordan has sampled two cars from the celebrated Super Touring era at Oulton Park, with both the old and the new set to feature on track this weekend.

The Eurotech Racing driver was invited by historic racer Mark Jones to drive a 1994 Vauxhall Cavalier and 1999 Renault Laguna, the latter formerly raced by Jason Plato alongside ex-Sauber F1 pilot Jean-Christophe Boullion.

The Super Touring Car Championship will run alongside the BTCC this weekend, with the first race after BTCC qualifying on Saturday, and the second before the BTCC finale on Sunday.

Giving his verdict on the cars, Jordan said: “The Vauxhall’s great, I loved it. It was nice and friendly to drive. It’s pretty much all the same stuff that my car’s got within reason – despite being 20 years old it felt like a touring car should.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 car felt nice and responsive and I didn’t want to come back into the pit lane.

“The Laguna felt much more on a knife edge. It was very different to drive; 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 Super Touring Car Championship races will also feature BTCC legends John Cleland and Patrick Watts, in a bumper grid of 29 cars.

Jordan 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.”