Sam Tordoff hailed the expertise of his West Surrey Racing engineers after he and Team JCT600 with GardX banished the disappointment of yesterdays qualifying to take an electric 1-3 in the second British Touring Car Championship race at Rockingham.
Tordoff, who qualified 27th behind team-mate Rob Collard in the torrentially wet session yesterday, quietly made progress through the field to 10th in the first contest, before blitzing the competition to win by a 2.8 second margin ahead of Andrew Jordan in race two.
The championship leader made a promising start, gaining five positions on the opening tour of the circuit before picking off his rivals one by one, culminating in relieving Mat Jackson of the race lead at half distance before extending his advantage in both the race, and the championship standings.
Reflecting afterwards, Tordoff paid tribute to his engineer for making a setup call that, in his eyes, revitalised the performance of the BMW 125i M-Sport on what seemed to be a frustrating weekend for WSR.
“Fair play to the team because once again my engineer John made a big call with setup and it transformed the car – it was absolutely beautiful,” enthused Tordoff.
“It was probably my most enjoyable race ever. I could put the car wherever I wanted and after yesterday it’s a fantastic turnaround.”
“I’ve become better at parking reservations to one side and concentrating on the driving, telling the guys it would be okay.”
He also praised Motorbase Performance for avoiding any incidents on track, never far from possible in the BTCC, even less so when two BMWs and two Fords’, both with race winning pace, are dicing for the lead.
The Fords knew what was coming. Fair play to them, they knew they were in a different race to me.” he admitted.
Looking ahead to the final contest at 16:40, which Tordoff will start from 7th, he admitted the aim is to minimise the damage in the championship to current second-placed man Matt Neal, who will start on the front row alongside pole-sitter Aron Smith.
Tordoff will also have to run the less effective ‘harder’ compound tyre, in addition to the maximum quota of success ballast, a crushing 75 kilograms.
“Race three’s damage limitation. The hard tyre with 75kgs doesn’t bode well but we’ll take what we can get, hopefully a top 10.”