Sam Tordoff was delighted to have secured a first qualifying pole position since his switch to West Surrey Racing, ahead of tomorrow’s opening British Touring Car Championship race at Croft.
Following a first victory with the team last time out at Oulton Park, Tordoff came out on top at his home circuit in a session-long battle between himself and team-mate Andy Priaulx to snatch pole by 0.050s.
And speaking to TouringCars.Net after the session, the 26 year-old was thrilled to be starting from the front of the grid for Round 13 of the season.
“It was great,” admitted Tordoff. “It’s my first pole for West Surrey Racing – they’re always quite sweet.
“It was a good day [and] we’ve built on the confidence we had at Oulton Park. That was an important step for me and I feel good in the car now, I feel comfortable in my surroundings.
“I’m really happy with what we achieved. It’s a weight off my shoulders to get my first pole after my first win so I feel like I can enjoy my driving a little bit more and tomorrow we’ve given ourselves the best opportunity to go and score some good points.”
Tordoff’s result came in contrast to a previous best qualifying position of eighth this year, and the Yorkshireman admitted that the result was more satisfying given that he and his team had worked to rectify that form.
“We made a big breakthrough at Oulton Park in terms of the way I like to drive and how I can use the tyre, and we’ve now applied that to the first qualifying since and we’ve stuck it on pole.
“It shows that we’re using the best of the tyre better and extracting more out of it which is probably the thing that I had lacked if I’m honest and being a bit self-critical.
“Now we can look forward to the race and I think the way our car works its tyres should stand us in good stead when the front-wheel drive cars start to struggle.”
With rain threatening to interfere with tomorrow’s races, concerns over tyres may not bear fruit, but Tordoff insisted that he was prepared for any eventuality.
“I’m one of those who has driven a front-wheel drive car around here in the past two years and it’s really not a nice place to be; you really struggle with the front tyres basically from the end of lap one.
“Even though the BMWs will struggle – we had a few issues this morning on a pair of really old tyres – we’re not going to struggle as much and that’s the important thing. 15 laps feels like a long time around here when you’ve got terminal understeer.
“I’m not particularly fussed about the weather – I think it’ll be fine, wet or dry. If you qualifying on the front row you give yourself such an advantage with regards to what happens tomorrow so I won’t be panicking if the rain comes.”