BTCC 2012 - Croft
First Practice
Andrew Jordan headed a Honda 1-2-3 in Croft Circuit’s opening Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship practice session.
Jordan’s best lap of 1m24.835s in his Pirtek Racing Honda Civic, achieved in blustery but dry conditions, was almost a second under the race lap record at the North Yorkshire track.
More impressively it was a staggering 0.830s faster than next fastest Gordon Shedden’s factory Honda Yuasa Racing Team Civic. There was then also another long gap of 0.721s to Shedden’s team-mate Matt Neal who set the third fastest time of 1m26.386s.
Notably Shedden survived a wild sideways moment over the muddy grass exiting Sunny In after being distracted by Will Bratt’s RAR Audi as it moved left out of his way.
Staffordshire’s Jordan, who achieved his first BTCC race win at Croft in 2010, told btcc.net: “The car feels good out of the box but it’s very early days. No way are those lap times representative of how close it’s going to get but, yes, it’s a good start to the weekend.”
Just over a second then covered the next nine runners. Fourth fastest was Dave Newsham’s ES Racing.com Vauxhall Vectra while Robert Collard’s eBay Motors BMW and Jason Plato’s MG KX Momentum Racing MG6 completed the top six.
As at Oulton Park, Adam Morgan again showed flashes of speed with the seventh fastest time – just 0.003s behind Plato – in his Speedworks Toyota Avensis. Rob Austin was eighth in the first of his RAR team’s two Audi A4s while Aron Smith was the fastest of the Redstone Racing Ford Focus drivers in tenth, although did inflict minor scuffing to his car’s left-front wheel arch when he clipped a tyre stack at the Chicane…
On his return to the BTCC, Paul O’Neill was 21st in Speedworks’s second Toyota although his session was interrupted half way through when the car’s engine fell into limp mode. Daniel Welch, just ahead in 20th, was also delayed while mechanics replaced a broken bonnet pin on his Welch Motorsport Proton Persona.
"I don't want to be treated as special because I'm not. I just drive a racing car round in circles a bit faster than everyone else." Michael Schumacher
Bookmarks