British Touring Car Championship returnee Sam Tordoff is confident of a victory in the season opener tomorrow after he qualified his Motorbase Ford Focus RS on the front row, behind pole-sitter Jack Goff.
He told TouringCars.Net he was somewhat surprised by his qualifying result, but feels he is in a good position for tomorrow’s races.
“It’s great to be back and obviously it’s a great result – probably slightly higher than I was expecting – but nevertheless we just got it all together at the right time,” said Tordoff.
“The car has changed a lot over the winter, Motorbase have done a hell of a lot of work making this RS a completely different beast to what the ST was, and I guess that’s been proven with where we’ve all qualified today.”
The 2016 runner up has selected the soft tyre for the opening race, revealing that a lack of championship success ballast was the reason behind the move.
“I wanted to get that out of the way,” explains Tordoff. “I never really like choosing race one, because I would hope I’d always be carrying loads of championship success ballast into the race.
“I’m assuming we’ll be up there in the championship so therefore doing it without the success ballast was the only reason why I’ve chosen to do it this weekend.”
Despite an obvious focus on his championship challenge, the former WSR runner made no secret of his desire for a win.
“I don’t see any reason why we can’t win. I’m not sure who else has gone soft tyre race one, but it’ll play out over the course of the weekend.
“The important thing is we’ve qualified well for the first race and we’ll still be in the mix, and I hope we continue to be in the mix for all three races.”
Teammate Tom Chilton secured seventh position for the opening race, with James Cole logging a lap good enough for 14th, 0.341s off Goff’s pole time.