Former British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) team boss Mike Jordan has admitted that he sold Eurotech Racing during the winter as his “heart wouldn’t be in it anymore” after son Andrew Jordan moved to Triple Eight Racing for 2015.
Mike Jordan has run the Eurotech Racing entry in the BTCC since 2006, competing in all seasons with the exception of 2009 when Andrew Jordan raced for the Triple Eight run works Vauxhall squad. During that time he has seen the team go from a small independent outfit to taking his son to Championship glory.
Over the winter, however, Jordan has sold a substantial shareholding to former BTCC driver Jeff Smith, who will take over the day-to-day running of the team.
“It came to a point when we decided to go with Triple Eight for our best package for Andrew this year, I had a bit of a choice to make,” explained Mike Jordan to TouringCars.Net. “I could carry on running the touring car team for two other drivers and I knew really that my heart wouldn’t be in it.
“I can’t look at it just as a business to earn a little bit of profit, because frankly with the budgets in touring cars you probably don’t earn any profit at the minute. For me it wasn’t really on.”
Smith raced in the BTCC for Eurotech between 2011 and 2013, first at the wheel of a S2000-spec Vauxhall Vectra before moving with the team to the NGTC Honda Civic which they continue to run. However in 2014 he didn’t return and was replaced by Martin Depper, who will not continue with the team in 2015.
“Jeff wanted to come back – he’d come to the last couple of meetings and chatted to us that he wanted to get back into touring cars,” continued Jordan. “At that point we were thinking that Martin was carrying on. So I sat down and said to them both: ‘It’s not going to be for me running this. I can’t give it my all if Andrew is a few garages up the pitlane. I want to be there helping him, overseeing his car alongside Ian Harrison’s people and looking after our sponsors’.
“So we came to a conclusion that the only way to do this was for Jeff to buy a shareholding in Eurotech and take over the running of it. It seemed to me like it was a pretty damn good exit strategy.
“He took on the whole running of it and bought trucks and equipment. The same staff are going to carry on running it, so the only things that won’t be part of it are Andrew and I.
“I’m only involved as an advisor, really. They’re staying on the same farm where we’ve been and they’ll carry on renting the same unit.”
Jordan emphasised that the decision to step back from Eurotech Racing was prompted by the changes for his son Andrew, who moves to Triple Eight Racing and who had a son shortly before Christmas.
“Taking Andrew from junior Rallycross ten years ago to winning the British Touring Cars was just such a buzz and I want to be involved with what he’s doing,” added Mike. “Traditionally some of the budgets that people will bring to drives in touring cars are barely wiping their face of doing it. So if you’re standing in that garage and not actually earning any money and Andrew’s further along [the pitlane], it just hasn’t got the motivation for me. Plus Andrew had a little toddler two weeks before Christmas.”
Despite the changes, Jordan revealed that he did consider whether to try to run a works’ Honda for Andrew, but decided against it in the end, partly due to his increasing order book for restoring historic racing cars.
“We looked at other things – did we try and make more of a play and run a works’ Honda ourselves or something like that. If I’d done anything like that it would have been totally immersive for me, and I didn’t want it. By doing it this way I could step away from operating the touring car team, I could do my historic stuff and if I want to go and have an afternoon and take one of the grandkids out I’ve now got time to do it. So for me it’s an absolutely win-win situation. I’ve never been happier.”