Sam Tordoff is aiming to maintain his current position as ‘best of the rest’ among the rear-wheel drive cars after qualifying fourth for the opening British Touring Car Championship race at Croft.
The Team GardX Racing driver did well to out-qualify over half of the 32-car field’s rear-wheel drive entries, and was just 0.203 seconds adrift of pole-sitter Ash Sutton’s Subaru Levorg GT.
After another nightmare at Oulton Park, where a fire curtailed the Ford Focus RS racer’s weekend after race two, the focus for Tordoff remains on taking the maximum number of points possible against opposition better suited to the 2.1 mile Yorkshire circuit.
“We’re ‘best of the rest’, so I guess that’s a good thing,” said Tordoff to TouringCars.net.
“This is a rear-wheel drive dominated circuit – I know that from previous years driving one – so I think we can be really happy to qualify fourth.
“That was as good as it was going to get, I think. I was happy with my lap, can’t say fairer than that.”
He also admitted past experience as a race-winner with West Surrey Racing in the same BMW 1-series trio he will compete against tomorrow helps his efforts, but still feels unable to overturn them in race trim over a distance.
“Ultimately, the theory doesn’t change,” he explained.
“The racing lines don’t change, I know from being successful here in a BMW where to place the car and where not to.
“The front-wheel drive car doesn’t quite have ‘it’ over a lap, but that’s how the circuit is and we knew that coming into the weekend. I think that’s clear to see, six of the top eight are rear-wheel drive cars.
“There’s no doubt we’ll struggle, and we’re aiming to be the first front-wheel drive car home. Wherever that is, then it’ll be a good result.”
Tordoff currently has half the points total of leader Colin Turkington, but remains in mathematical contention for the title with over half the season to run.
He remains hopeful three strong finishes tomorrow could be the springboard to fight for those honours after a poor run of luck in the opening four meetings of the 2018 campaign.
“We have to just score points. We’ve been super fast all year, our qualifying average speaks for itself – we’re by far the best qualifier – and we just can’t finish races at the moment.
“We’ve had loads of ridiculous things go wrong, things breaking that haven’t before, stuff that we couldn’t have foreseen, etc. And that’s just been the story of my season, unfortunately. We’ll keep chipping away and, sooner or later, my luck’s going to change.”
The opening race tomorrow [24th June] gets underway at 12:05 BST.