Tordoff: That's been a long time coming

Sam Tordoff has heaped praise on his Motorbase Performance squad after clinching his first British Touring Car Championship pole position of 2018 at Silverstone.

Tordoff had endured a 'miserable' practice running up until qualifying but the 2016 BTCC runner-up reaped the benefits from a series of changes made to his Ford Focus RS machine, which ultimately allowed the 29-year old to take the Motorbase squad's first pole of the year.

A 58.323s lap around the National configuration of the Silverstone circuit was enough to put Tordoff just 0.018s ahead of Team BMW's Ricky Collard in second.

Having endured a so far luckless campaign in 2018, Tordoff sits 11th in the drivers' standings, meaning the Motorbase Performance driver will be able to attack the opening race with zero success ballast.

"That’s been a long time coming. We’ve nearly got it a fair few times this year. I had visions of Rockingham, being pipped at the post," said Tordoff.

"We’ve had a miserable day so far in practice and we’ve had to pull out all the stops. We came here expecting to go and do that and we knew we had the pace to do it. We’ve changed everything on the car since this morning.

"We were just slow. I’ve gone almost a second faster in qualifying, so credit to the team – that was their pole. We’ll sleep happy tonight.”