MG duo score valuable points in Thruxton thrillers

THE MG Triple Eight Racing team stormed back onto the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) podium during a thrilling third round at Hampshire’s Thruxton circuit this weekend (9-10 May), collecting further championship points at arguably the worst track for the pacey MG6 GT racer.

The MG-factory supported squad delivered a progressive performance yet again, collecting five top-ten finishes during Sunday’s three races, ending on a high note with a well-deserved podium in the final race for Andrew Jordan, with Jack Goff narrowly missing out a podium in the second race of the weekend.

Saturday’s qualifying session didn’t run to plan for the Triple Eight drivers, with the Swindon-powered MG6 GT’s pace marginally below the required margin, in a very tight session that saw the top sixteen cars qualify within a second of each other. Goff was again impressive, grinding out a seventh place grid spot with a 1:17.213, which while five tenths off the quickest MG last year, was reflective of the fact that the pole time was also six tenths down on last year. By comparison, Jordan was just 0.187s off his team-mate, which put the 2013 BTCC Champion eleventh on the first race grid, such was the close nature of the session.

From the outset, it looked like a weekend of fresh promise for the MG men as Jordan charged off the start line, moving up to tenth by the end of the first lap. Local driver, Rob Collard would be Jordan’s next victim on lap nine, before a puncture for Aron Smith’s Volkswagen promoted the Red Bull athlete to eighth. With three laps remaining, Jordan turned poacher again, leapfrogging his team-mate and reigning BTCC Champion Colin Turkington for sixth, a result he held to the flag.

Initially ahead based on his row four start, Goff was unsettled compared to his past performances with the reigning manufacturer champions. Turkington and his Team BMR team-mate Smith (now a lap down) combined to hinder Goff, which in turn brought the recovering Andy Priaulx into the battle too.

Contact from Priaulx’s BMW was sufficient enough to break the lower wishbone and warp the tracking on the MG, and the 24-year BRDC Rising Star slipped backwards as a result, claiming an eighth place finish to collect further points for the squad’s championship campaign.

After the excitement of race one, a more attacking pair of performances from both Goff and Jordan were delivered in race two with the MG drivers seemingly more pacey, both making up four places on the opening tour of the 2.3 mile Hampshire track.

As the pack settled down, a clash between Matt Neal and Smith proved beneficial to Goff, with the MG racer picking off Neal’s Honda on lap 7, before two laps later getting past Smith’s Volkswagen CC for fourth. Try as he might, Goff couldn’t sustain a serious challenge on Shedden’s Honda and he finished 0.5ss adrift as they crossed the line after sixteen laps of racing.

Following Goff past the wounded Neal on lap seven, Jordan’s charge to the front was delayed by Smith, until he got past on lap twelve, closing the gap to sixth-placed Tordoff to just 0.448s before the end of the race.

Starting on the front row for the first time this year, Jordan harried pole-man Morgan over the early laps, quickly breaking away from the BMW of former Triple Eight driver, Sam Tordoff. Before too long Morgan and his Mercedes had outpaced Jordan and a gap of 2s developed, with the MG unable to compete for outright speed with the Mercedes A-Class.

Having made a good start, Goff held fifth off the line before the fast-starting Honda of Gordon Shedden put the MG ace under serious pressure. There was light relief on lap eight when a lengthy safety car period began after Warren Scott’s off at the Complex.

When racing resumed on lap twelve, Jordan looked to have something in reserve and set off with Morgan, again distancing themselves from the BMW of Tordoff. Goff wasn’t quite so fortunate and lost out to the hustling pack behind on the restart, getting relegated to sixth by Shedden, before Plato and Neal ushered there way past two laps later.

5-Star Cases backed racer Goff then had a major snap oversteer moment at the flat-out Church corner, which further demoted him down the order to eleventh, while Jordan pushed Morgan to the flag, securing a second place finish for the Pirtek side of the garage, and a second consecutive weekend featuring silverware.

Both Triple Eight men drop a place in the drivers championship, with Jordan fifth (99 points) and Goff now seventh (80 points), keeping pace with the series leader Shedden who has accumulated 114 points.

Team Principal, Ian Harrison commented, “Solid rather than spectacular is the summary of the weekend. We are in a situation where the set up delivers sporadic performance, so we know the car can do the job. It’s up to the engineering group and drivers to extract that performance which isn’t happening at the moment. Having said that, and this isn’t an excuse, but we have new drivers and new engineers this season working with a different car. They have made big improvements to our soft tyre and wet tyre set-ups but we need to keep working on outright speed though, especially in qualifying.”

MG Triple Eight Racing currently lies third in the HiQ Team standings and second in the manufacturers championship following this weekend’s third round action. The BTCC now has a four-week break before reconvening at Cheshire’s Oulton Park circuit on 6-7 June.

Andrew Jordan: “I’m frustrated by the performances this weekend. We’re in the mix thanks to consistency, not necessarily down to outright speed. We need to try and add that into our performances over the remainder of the season. You can’t roll out with last year’s set up; you’d be nowhere if you did. Things move on so quickly now and it’s evolving all the time. Both Jack and I drive the car differently to Plato and Tordoff, so there isn’t that much that can be applied from them either. So, I’m disappointed but that said, if you’d told me yesterday that I’d finish on the podium today I’d have taken it! You’ve got to keep your head down and keep at it, it’s a long season and it’s always good to get silverware. We’re still very much in the title hunt, but we need more pace. We’re going to go away now and work on it. From my point of view I want to be scoring podiums on a more regular basis.”

Jack Goff: “It just didn’t really happen for us this weekend. Race two was the highlight of the weekend for me. Coming from tenth to fourth made it palatable, but it was frustrating to lose my time for the race two start. I think we’ve made improvements throughout the course of the weekend again. We found something in FP2 yesterday, but it’s still not perfect, and we’ll need to keep chipping away. The time in race showed we’re getting there, so the pace is obviously in the car, we just haven’t had a chance to show it. Up until race three, every race I’ve finished had been in the top ten, which is pretty consistence. We had some damage in race one that held us back also, but it was okay. Tyres had been okay this weekend, but when the safety car went in they dropped off massively. It was surprisingy quite polite out there today and very clean and fair – perhaps if I’d hung on a bit longer I might have got a tap or two, but it was good clean racing. Regarding our performances, well we’ve had problems with both oversteer and understeer this weekend. There has been a general lack of grip all round really; there wasn’t much fight in the car in the third race at all and I did the best I could, but it wasn’t the result I wanted, or needed.”

 

Words by Triple Eight Racing | www.tripleeight.co.uk
Photos by Aaron Lupton | raceteamimages.com