Sam Tordoff was content with finishing second in the opening British Touring Car Championship race of the weekend at Oulton Park, with the Team JCT600 with GardX driver trailing home 2.4 seconds adrift of Colin Turkington.
The BMW 125i M-Sport made a characteristically strong getaway from the start, relieving Eurotech Racing’s Daniel Lloyd of his front-row position and putting the pressure onto Turkington’s Levorg up front. However, the double champion began to ease away in front and was never seriously challenged from thereon in.
Tordoff elected to start the race on the harder compound tyre in a bid to score strong points in the first two contests before switching, as per championship regulations, to the softer tyre for the final, usually most closely-fought, encounter. Tordoff’s logic behind the move was a belief that the softer tyre is the less effective of the two this weekend at the sun-kissed Cheshire circuit.
The result sees Tordoff move up to joint second in the Drivers standings alongside team-mate Rob Collard, who endured a frustrating first race after spinning at Island hairpin and falling to the very rear of the field. With only a seven point deficit to Matt Neal in front, who finished ninth, another strong result in race two could see Tordoff take the lead of the championship.
Speaking after the race, Tordoff admitted that the Levorg was simply too good to catch and theorized as to where the sudden leap in performance has come from.
“He was [too quick]. I thought the race would come to me and actually, as soon as I got close, he put the hammer down and had a bit in reserve.”
“I’m not sure where that pace came from – probably helped by the boost increase in the week, but [it’s a] convincing victory for Colin [Turkington] and at the end of the day, second was a good result for us and some more points in the bag.”
The second race of the afternoon gets underway at 14:45, with Tordoff set to carry 66kg of success ballast on board his BMW 1-series. He starts the race on the front row alongside Turkington in second, with Plato and Shedden behind him on row two.