Going back is the future
Columnist Andrew Jordan’s historic motorsport passion
Historic racing is something that has become a huge part of my life, and something I get probably the maximum enjoyment from in anything I do on circuits.
I came to historics through the British Touring Car Championship, though. BTCC TV producer Mark Cross has an historic Morris Minor – ironically, the same type of car my dad Mike made his racing debut in – and Crossy invited me to race it at Goodwood in 2012, and I jumped at the chance.
The Austin A40s were running at the front of the race we were in and dad found one which we bought just to potter about in as a road car. That was the initial thought, but after a while we decided to start building that as a racer.
We were running our own team in the British Touring Car Championship in those days, and that was just the work side of thing. We wanted to go and do some racing that we could just enjoy. We didn’t want the politics, commercial requirements and the grief that you get in front-line racing.
The way I see it, everyone gets into motor racing for the enjoyment of driving cars. When things get serious, the enjoyment almost gets overlooked by results and pressure.
That was what started the historic preparation side. There was no intention of starting it as a business because we were so involved in the BTCC, but things changed and it has now become a central part of what we do at the Jordan Racing Team. People came to us – previous or existing customers – but it has snowballed from there and I now think we are on our 29th car build, or something ridiculous like that since 2014.
The thing that I find quite different is the whole environment over the race weekend. Excluding the high-profile Goodwood Revival, something like an HRDC (Historic Racing Drivers Club) meeting are some of my favourite events. Everyone is there just to enjoy it and have some good fun and good racing. If I get out of the car and I have won the race, I will be smiling, but you can see people who have finished further down the order who are taking as much pleasure from their results as I am from mine. They’ve had a great race too, and that is refreshing to see.
In the BTCC, I can stand around and chat to another driver, but I’m thinking that I would screw them over completely if I had to just to get a result. In historics, you chat beforehand and then you can go and have a good, fair race and what will be will be in terms of results.
I am massively into historics now, they float my boat 100 times more than modern cars, if I am honest. They are quite simple in the sense that there is no bullshit with them, you can physically work on them and you don’t need a computer to tell you what’s gone wrong. I struggle to answer why I like old cars so much, but I do.
From a business side of it, I am full on with it. I try to make our cars as good as possible and as quick as possible. If that is me or dad driving one, or a customer trying to get into the top 20 of a race, then I will give it the same amount of commitment.
I am totally invested in it.
You just can’t beat seeing the old cars sliding around, there’s nothing better. That is not only from the driving side, it is from the watching side too, with the sights and the smell of the oil. It is a real sensory experience. You don’t get that so much with modern motorsport. It is that touchy feeling thing. I am not having a go at modern motorsport, but it just doesn’t excite me as much as historic racing does.
Another thing, particularly about Goodwood, is that you race against all kinds of people, and I have had some of my best races there: I remember one with Gordon Shedden and Frank Stippler. Awesome. I’ve raced against people like Andre Lotterer too: some of the world’s best drivers and they are all walking around with a smile on their face. It doesn’t look like they’ve got big egos and they are just enjoying their sport.
They want to win, but they are loving the racing too. I bet if you asked them if they enjoyed driving to a target lap time in World Endurance or something. They would say yes if they’d won but maybe not otherwise. I enjoy every single lap in a historic car.
“Historic racing is a total sensory experience – watching or racing in it”