Sam Tordoff admitted he had expected to lose ground to his main championship rival Gordon Shedden in the opening British Touring Car Championship contest at Brands Hatch this morning, but the Team JCT600 with GardX ace is now targeting a round thirty showdown with the Scot.
Incredibly, only Jason Plato dropped out of contention from the record-breaking eight drivers that arrived in Kent with a shot at championship glory, though Tordoff retains his standings lead by six points virtue of his tenth place finish in race one.
With a mere nine kilograms on board his BMW 125i M-Sport and a fresh set of soft Dunlop compound tyres on all four corners for the next race, Tordoff is aiming to make his progress in the title battle over the course of the middle race.
He spoke to TouringCars.net shortly after the conclusion of race one and explained his thought process behind the opening contest.
“That was the best it was going to be with the weight – seventy-five kilograms is never pretty. Glad to get that one out of the way, we’ve got no weight now and soft tyres, so this is where the weekend starts.” explained Tordoff.
He believes a race victory from tenth, as he achieved at Rockingham, would be an unrealistic result, but remains hopeful of finishing high enough on the results sheet to set up a final round showdown.
“It would be nice to win it, but I’m not expecting to win it to be honest. We just need to be in the top six or top eight, that’s where we need to be and then it will set us up for a title showdown in race three.”
He conceded both he and WSR had expected to struggle all along in the first race, but pointed to the difference in performance they experienced at the previous two rounds once clear of the success ballast, sending an ominous message out to his main rivals.
“It was always going to be shit because we had all that weight on and so I’m just glad to get it out of the way, to be honest. The car should feel completely different now, I’m hoping. It did so at Rockingham and Silverstone so it should transform. There’s a few other people on soft tyres as well, which could cause me problems but we’ll keep doing what we’re doing.”
“I was expecting to lose points in race one, for sure, but from hereon in it’s gloves off. I have to do everything within reason, as risk-averse as I can be whilst making progress.”
Tordoff will start the second race from the back of the fifth row, which gets underway in just under an hour at 14:32.