News - Brands Hatch Thriller

A visit to Brands Hatch on the 19/20th of August proved to be a very exciting meeting for the championship. Moving towards the business end of the season points were getting tight at the top.

Having never raced at Brands Hatch before the only testing Jordan had to try and learn the extremely difficult circuit including the infamous Paddock hill bend was 20 minutes on Friday lunchtime during a press day for the championship. The day included photo shoots with the new owners of Ginetta, Team LNT and their drivers as well as the Le Mans winning Panoz car.

With Jordan’s sponsor for this race, Graham Mozden of Ice Impressions Colchester, attending the meeting the pressure was on to try and deliver a result.

Qualifying on the Saturday went very well with Jordan recording fastest lap time at the end of the restarted session after a red flag stoppage. The close finish meant that Jordan had pole position for race one but a second place start for race two as his second fastest lap was just eclipsed by Harrison’s. Jordan had little complaints with the car except a slight movement under braking, but it was decided amongst the team this was nothing to worry about.

Race one was held on Saturday afternoon a change to the usual program for the series. Jordan raced well in the opening laps pulling away in the lead setting the fastest lap of the race. As he came through Surtees bend of the 4th lap the problem from qualifying returned in extreme fashion. Under braking the back end of the car snapped away from Jordan and took him off towards the barrier. He managed to get back onto the circuit but had to put in a spirited display to come back to 6th place when the race was stopped because of a stranded car in the gravel at Paddock Hill bend. Without this Jordan may have been able to recover even more after his brake failure.

Race two saw a titanic scrap between the three title contenders, Jordan, Henry Surtees and James Harrison. The race was rather reminiscent of some touring cars races with all three drivers swapping and trading positions and paintwork! The race continued in this fashion right to the flag with Jordan just falling short of the victory but recording another strong second place finish and fastest lap of the race.

He said: “This weekend has been very strong, we are definitely the quickest car in the championship now and after recovering from the problem in race one the championship is still on. I need to get back to winning ways at Croft and take the fight for the championship to James.”