Sam Tordoff was pleased with putting his BMW in tenth on the grid for the first British Touring Car Championship race at Snetterton, telling TouringCars.Net that it was a case of ‘damage limitation’ in qualifying.
Points leader Tordoff was carrying the maximum 75 kg of success ballast into the session as a result of leading the championship heading to Snetterton. Despite the extra weight, the WSR driver was able to break into the top ten – just – with a lap that put him ahead of both of his lighter team-mates on the grid.
“I don’t think we can be too disappointed at all,” said Tordoff to TouringCars.Net. “That was basically about where we were going to be. We can be pleased that we’ve done a good job – I’ve beaten my two team-mates, so I’ve done a good lap in that respect – and it’s a case of damage limitation I think this weekend.
“I don’t think it was going to be the best-ever circuit for us, and there’s some really long straights and some tight hairpins to drag the car out of with all that weight, so for me if we can just have a good first race, get through it, score some points and take the weight off for race two and three then hopefully we should score some good points over the weekend.”
Tordoff praised the work which has been done by WSR’s engine partners at Neil Brown Engineering which has seen improvements to the overall performance of the unit.
“We’ve made big improvements on the engine side, but we’re never going to be the fastest in a straight line because of the shape of the car,” added the 27-year-old. “I can’t complain as the guys have spent a fortune on engine development and it’s certainly working, because we arrived first and second in the championship as a team.
“We just take the rough with the smooth. There’s a lot of circuits we go to and this one’s not quite suited to us but you get through it and you move on.
“If we’re going to win the championship we have to learn to deal with having 75 kg on, it’s as simple as that, so we deal with it and we keep moving forward and scoring points.”