Andrew Jordan left Thruxton content with a second podium of the British Touring Car Championship season, but insisted that he and his Triple Eight Racing team would need to improve in the remainder of the campaign.
After qualifying in 11th for the opening race of the day, Jordan made solid progress through the field to finish in sixth, while a seventh place in race two gave him second on the grid for the final race of the afternoon.
Jordan was unable to challenge polesitter and eventual race winner Adam Morgan, but brought his MG6 home in a comfortable second place to score a second podium of the season.
And speaking after the final race, the 2013 champion was pleased to have something to show for his efforts after a somewhat trying weekend.
“It was a good end to a frustrating weekend,” said Jordan. “We have struggled but it’s nice to get some silverware and we’re still in the title hunt but we need more pace so we’ll go away and work at it.
“To get a podium – if you’d told me last night that I’d have got one today I would have been pretty surprised.”
A solitary podium nevertheless came as something of a surprise with Thruxton traditionally being one of Jordan’s strongest circuits, the 25 year-old having secured pole at the Hampshire venue in the previous three years.
The MG driver admitted that he had battled with handling issues for much of Saturday, but while he insisted that he and his team needed to find improvements, he remained at a loss as to why he had struggled quite so much.
“In qualifying [we had] high speed oversteer, where you need stability around here. Although some of my laps look edgy, it’s edgy in a progressive way – it’s a feel thing – whereas yesterday it was big snap where you can’t then carry the speed.
“I was surprised. But you’re here to do a job so you’ve got to get on with it and make the best of it that you can. We’ve got to keep our heads down and keep at it; it’s a long season and I’ll go away and do some hard work as will the team. We need to step it up.”
On a difficult start to the year, Jordan made no effort to hide his belief that results had fallen short of expectations, but took some comfort from his championship position despite a mixed opening three rounds of the season.
“Frustrating,” he said to TouringCars.Net, when asked to assess his start to the campaign. “We’re in the mix through consistency, not necessarily from speed. We need to go away and do some work to make sure we’re scoring points on pace rather than consistency.
“From my point of view I want to be scoring podiums on a more regular basis. But it’s good to go into the break with another podium [and] it’s a long season yet, a lot can happen.
“I’m not going to get down about it, we just need to work hard.”