Andrew Jordan tops opening practice at Oulton Park

Andrew Jordan enjoyed the ideal start to his Oulton Park weekend after topping the times in opening practice for the fourth meeting of the BTCC season.

The Pirtek Racing driver went into the weekend looking to rebound from tough meetings at both Donington Park and Thruxton, and made the most of his ballast-free BMW 125i M Sport to emerge on top of the times from the first 40 minutes of track action.

Jordan – who became a father for the second time this week – left it until his final lap of the session to post a best time of 1min 26.535secs, leaving him two tenths clear of the Mercedes of Adam Morgan.

Morgan had led the way for much of the session before being deposed right at the end, with the Honda of Jack Goff and Josh Cook’s Maximum Motorsport Ford Focus rounding out the top four.

A surprising fifth quickest was the leading Subaru of James Cole, with the former single-seater racer showing by far his strongest pace of the season to lap within four tenths of a second of the pace, with Rob Collard, championship leader Tom Ingram and Ash Sutton rounding out the top eight.

Having predicted a tough weekend on track, Gordon Shedden was down in 13th spot having failed to set a time until the closing stages of the session, with team-mate Matt Neal two places further back.

Aron Taylor-Smith’s MG was the only car not to set a time.