Sam Tordoff is confident of scoring three strong finishes in the penultimate meeting of the British Touring Car Championship today, despite qualifying a lower-than-expected 16th in qualifying yesterday.
Laden with a full quota of success ballast by virtue of his five point championship advantage heading to Silverstone, the six-time race winner could only manage a fastest lap time of 59.014, just under seven tenths of a second adrift of pole-sitter Ashley Sutton.
With his main title rivals, Matt Neal and defending champion Gordon Shedden, qualifying ahead in 7th and 10th respectively, the onus is on Tordoff to shed his success ballast in race one, before moving forward to finish the day strongly if he is to retain his lead heading to the finale at Brands Hatch in October.
Despite his disadvantage, the 27-year old was still the fastest of the three West Surrey Racing BMW 125i M-Sport machines, with Jack Goff and Rob Collard starting further back in 17th and 24th.
Given the circumstances, Tordoff admitted he felt the maximum had been extracted from the car, and explained that the BMW as a package is less suited to Silverstone’s 1.64 National circuit that some other layouts.
“I think we extracted the maximum from the car today, given that we were carrying the maximum success ballast.” admitted Tordoff.
“We’ve said before that the Silverstone National Circuit, which is basically three straights, doesn’t allow us to exploit the BMW’s strengths as much as the more twisty tracks, and so we knew today was going to be a challenge.”
“I did have some help from Jack Goff in the other WSR BMW with a tow right at the end, which improved the lap time.”
Regardless of his starting position, the former MG ace expects to be in fighting form when the first race gets underway at 11:57.
“It’s not an ideal position to be starting in, but in race trim the BMW is always a strong machine, so I have no doubt we can finish much higher tomorrow.”