West Surrey Racing’s Sam Tordoff will head into the coming British Touring Car Championship rounds with renewed optimism, after scoring a first podium of the season at Thruxton.
The 26 year-old finished third in race three at the Hampshire circuit having started in that position after the reverse-grid draw, with that result following respective eleventh- and sixth-placed finishes in the day’s opening two races.
Speaking to TouringCars.Net, Tordoff was delighted to have registered a first rostrum finish both of the campaign and for West Surrey Racing – a result that was made sweeter by the wait he had endured to do so.
“It’s fantastic,” he said. “It’s been a long time coming, I thought it would be a lot quicker for the podium to come than this but circumstances have worked against us a little bit and it’s just not happened for me this year.
“After race one [where Tordoff finished 11th] I didn’t think it was going to happen for me this weekend either but we dug deep and made some good changes for race two, got the bit of luck that we needed and we’ve ended up coming away with a sixth and a third from races two and three.
“All in all it was a good weekend, I’m really happy and now we’re going to go to some circuits that suit us a little bit better and hopefully we can use this as a platform to kick on.”
Despite the result, Tordoff admitted that, in line with his and his teammate’s comments so far this season, he had struggled for straightline speed throughout the weekend and said that he had fought to stay with Andrew Jordan ahead of him in the third race in order to maximise his top speed to defend his position.
“We are vulnerable in a straight line,” he insisted. “The car is fantastic, the chassis is really good. We’re vulnerable here obviously with Thruxton being Thruxton [and] for that race my most important thing was to get in the slipstream of Andrew Jordan and keep there.
“On our own we’re massively vulnerable and I knew the only way I was going to stop Colin [Turkington] coming past was to try and hang on to Andrew and keep in his slipstream.
“I managed to do that luckily – there were a few close calls near the end – but the last thing you want behind you around here is a Volkswagen so I was quite relieved to finish on the podium.”
The two-time race winner also believed that the breakthrough result had been an important one to secure before the next round of the season at Oulton Park, with a month’s break ahead of the visit to the Cheshire circuit.
“For me it was especially important because I feel like we’ve had a couple of rubbish opening rounds; I don’t feel like we’re anywhere near where we should be in the championship.
“I feel like it’s been a bit of a disappointment and we’ve underachieved massively so to come here, to score some decent points and turn it around is a big mental boost for me.”
Looking ahead to those upcoming rounds, Tordoff was confident of an improved showing for both he and the team, with the next two circuits in particular having been happy hunting grounds for WSR in recent years.
“[They should be] very good. We’ve got Oulton Park, Croft [and] Knockhill coming up next which are all really strong circuits for the BMW, and it’s also where speed differential doesn’t matter to the same extent so I think looking forward we can be positive.”