Sam Tordoff felt both he and Team JCT600 with GardX had hit a sweet spot with the BMW 125i M-Sport during the first British Touring Car Championship race at Rockingham, with the championship leader storming through from 27th on the grid to 10th.
Tordoff, who also had the full quota of seventy-five kilograms of success ballast on board, initially struggled to scythe his way through the field in the same manner as team-mate Rob Collard, but as the latter began to struggle on the soft tyres Tordoff was able to get past and push forward on the medium rubber.
Speaking to TouringCars.net shortly after the race, Tordoff admitted that was probably the maximum he could have extracted from the car, but felt the setup direction had been positive and believes that, without success ballast, he stands in good stead to make further progress in race two.
“I think that was as good as it was ever going to be.” admitted Tordoff.
“If we’d have gotten into the top fifteen that would have been a great effort and a great result, to get tenth was good considering we had the weight on. It shows we’ve definitely gone in the right direction in terms of setup.”
With the reverse grid contest looming, there was some suggestion of a dilemma for Tordoff, whether to push for a victory and be relegated to the lower reaches of the top ten or to tactically target a 6th-10th finish and aim for a reverse pole, but Tordoff insists the target is to push as far as possible.
“We’re going to push on and try and get as many points as possible,” he explained.
“We’ve taken all the weight out now, and lost 66kg, so I think that’ll make a big difference and should give us some more pace again.”
The second race gets underway shortly at 13:52.