BTCC Brands Hatch: WSR's Jordan leads Tordoff in first practice

Driving the brand new BMW 330i M Sport, Jordan set the pace at 48.034 seconds to beat Tordoff by 0.057s in a session where 26 of the 30-car field were covered by less than a second.

It looked as though different guises of Honda Civic would take a cleansweep of the top three, as AmD Tuning driver Tordoff - using in the previous generation FK2 Type R - headed the Team Dynamics factory FK8 of Dan Cammish and BTC Racing driver Chris Smiley at the halfway stage.

As the Civic dominated early-on, the fastest rear-wheel drive car was the Subaru Levorg GT of Team BMR's Ashley Sutton in fourth place until Jordan went top.

Jordan ended up more than three tenths faster than his WSR team-mates, with Tom Oliphant in 12th, one spot ahead of reigning champion Colin Turkington.

Matt Neal took fourth from Sutton, who ultimately fell to sixth and was 0.255s off Jordan.

Defending independents drivers' champion Tom Ingram piloted the brand new Toyota GB-backed Speedworks Corolla to ninth, ahead of the ex-WSR BMW 1 Series of Stephen Jelley.

Jake Hill finished 11th in the Trade Price Cars Audi S3, while his team-mate and former Formula 1 driver Mark Blundell rounded out the field in 30th, 1.2s adrift of the pace.

Although the session was uninterrupted, Blundell did briefly run off the track at Surtees as he battled snap oversteer, and filled up his S3's radiator with grass as he returned to the circuit.

After moving from Power Maxed Racing to Team BMR for this year, Senna Proctor - who earned a surprise victory at Brands last season in a rain-affected race - ended FP1 in 18th.

Proctor has effectively swapped places with double BTCC champion Jason Plato, who is still chasing 100 wins in the category after a trying stint at Team BMR.

In the PMR Vauxhall Astra, the same model line with which he won his 2001 crown, Plato was 19th in first practice.

His team-mate Rob Collard, who had to sit out the end of last season due to concussion, was 26th, ahead of the Motorbase Ford Focus RS of Nic Hamilton.

FP1 results

Pos	Driver	Team	Car	Gap	Laps
1	Andrew Jordan	WSR	BMW	48.034s	22
2	Sam Tordoff	AmD Tuning	Honda	0.057s	30
3	Dan Cammish	Team Dynamics	Honda	0.078s	30
4	Chris Smiley	BTC Racing	Honda	0.137s	24
5	Matt Neal	Team Dynamics	Honda	0.142s	33
6	Ash Sutton	BMR Racing	Subaru	0.255s	28
7	Josh Cook	BTC Racing	Honda	0.263s	27
8	Rory Butcher	AmD Tuning	Honda	0.266s	28
9	Tom Ingram	Speedworks Motorsport	Toyota	0.272s	28
10	Stephen Jelley	Team Parker Racing	BMW	0.274s	32
11	Jake Hill	Trade Price Cars Racing	Audi	0.310s	30
12	Tom Oliphant	WSR	BMW	0.318s	26
13	Colin Turkington	WSR	BMW	0.342s	32
14	Adam Morgan	Ciceley Motorsport	Mercedes	0.475s	33
15	Aiden Moffat	Laser Tools Racing	Mercedes	0.514s	25
16	Ollie Jackson	Motorbase Performance	Ford	0.515s	29
17	Tom Chilton	Motorbase Performance	Ford	0.584s	27
18	Matt Simpson	Simpson Racing	Honda	0.801s	23
19	Jason Plato	Power Maxed Racing	Vauxhall	0.825s	29
20	Jack Goff	Team Hard	Volkswagen	0.829s	26
21	Bobby Thompson	Team Hard	Volkswagen	0.855s	24
22	Daniel Rowbottom	Ciceley Motorsport	Mercedes	0.883s	31
23	Senna Proctor	BMR Racing	Subaru	0.904s	31
24	Michael Crees	Team Hard	Volkswagen	0.914s	25
25	Rob Smith	Excelr8 Motorsport	MG	0.928s	36
26	Rob Collard	Power Maxed Racing	Vauxhall	0.973s	31
27	Nicolas Hamilton	Motorbase Performance	Ford	1.013s	29
28	Carl Boardley	Team Hard	Volkswagen	1.417s	22
29	Sam Osborne	Excelr8 Motorsport	MG	1.485s	35
30	Mark Blundell	Trade Price Cars Racing	Audi	1.501s	22