Title contenders Jordan
and Turkington had to grit
their teeth in the midfieldOld vs new: Tordoff
showed FK2’s lasting
pace with race one winRACE CENTRE BTCC THRUXTON
48 AUTOSPORT.COM 22 AUGUST 2019despite their Civics having been replaced by
a new model in the showrooms, the FK2 still
has plenty to offer. In many ways, thanks to
Gordon Shedden’s and Matt Neal’s success
in the car since 2012 (and discounting the
oddball estate Civic in 2014), that machine
has been the car of the NGTC era.
Tordoff had been desperately unlucky not
to win the opening race at the Hampshire
circuit back in May. A failing alternator had
drained his electrical supply, and when it
killed the power steering he ran wide and
lost the win. This time he put that to rights.
A strong launch from Plato meant it
wasn’t until the stop for Campbell that
Tordoff truly established himself in the
lead. But Plato’s penalty soon took him
out of contention and allowed Tordoff
to break his 2019 duck.
The misfortune of unreliability didn’t
spare him for too long, however, as first-lap
damage to his radiator in the second race
sent the water temperature soaring. He
managed the issue to the flag, but not
before dropping down to 10th position.
That teed up Cook for the win, havingclimbed from fourth to third almost
immediately after Cammish’s fluffed start.
Tordoff was stout in the defence of his lead,
and Cook needed to relieve the Ciceley
Motorsport Mercedes of a rejuvenated
Adam Morgan from second place. Again
proving the FK8’s braking prowess, Cook
demoted both on the run to Club. They ran
three abreast, but Cook was the more
aggressive to claim the scalps.
Tordoff’s resilience continued as he held
up a queue of cars before finally being forced
off line and conceding five positions in one
hit. By this time, Cook was already cruising
to a 2s win, with Morgan still clear of final
podium finisher Neal by 6.4s.
The high average speeds of Thruxton
mean it’s mislabelled as a power circuit.
In truth, the key is to preserve momentum
around its fast corners. Chassis balance
is essential and simple straight-line
performance isn’t an absolute. Since
Jordan’s brace of wins at Thruxton earlier
this season, the BMW 330i M Sport has had
its turbo boost dropped, everyone else has
had theirs upped, plus the BMW’s centre of
gravity has been raised. Combine it all with
Turkington’s maximum of 54kg of success
ballast and Jordan’s 48kg, and it dropped
them almost 0.5s off in qualifying.
Unable to run in clean air, and having to be
mindful of bagging points wherever possible
among the scramble of the midfield, progress
was slow for BMW’s title contenders.
Seventh and ninth respectively for Jordan
and Turkington in race two was a high point.
The tight confines of Knockhill for the
next round won’t be entirely kind to
the 330i’s long wheelbase. But precedent
shows that it’s at least another rear-wheel-
drive hunting ground. With three rounds
of the season to go, that’ll come as a
welcome shot in the arm for the WSR
drivers’ title hopes.wheels off the thing so why’s there always
one guy that’s doing a better job than I am?’
It’s added up, pole positions I’ve missed by
thousandths. Finally, today it came. Is the
pace here to stay? Who knows, but we’re
going to make very sure that it does.”
It also completed a Honda hat-trick for
the weekend. Whereas Andrew Jordan’s
BMW won twice at Thruxton earlier this
season, this time around front-wheel-
drive cars dominated the action.
Plowman added: “To sell a couple of cars
and to have one [of those BTC Racing
machines] win races before you do is not
ideal, but then it does prove that we’re
not selling second-rate products to
someone else – something that’s different
to what we use ourselves. We’ve sold them
a pukka deal; they’ve got everything we’ve
got. There is back-and-forth: generally
[BTC] come to us when they think they’re
not where they should be and we are, or
we’ll go to them when we’re not. It’s very
open and actually in the contract for the
cars and engines to data-share.”
Once again AmD Tuning proved that,