Tordoff aiming for 'long overdue' win

AmD Tuning's Sam Tordoff has his sights set on converting pole position into his first British Touring Car Championship race victory of 2019 at Thruxton.

Thruxton has proved to be a happy hunting ground for Tordoff so far this season after the Honda Civic Type-R driver took his second pole of the year at the same venue during yesterday's qualifying after beating two-time champion Jason Plato by 0.014s.

Tordoff admitted his route to claiming a second pole of the season wasn't a straight-forward affair. Suspension failure in FP1 meant the 2016 BTCC runner-up was forced to play catch up for the remainder of the day before finally enjoying a good balance qualifying.

"I’m very delighted with that," Tordoff told Crash.net. "But it’s not been without its issues today [Saturday]. We had a suspension failure during FP1 this morning so we didn’t get any real running and we struggled with the car in FP2.

"We made some substantial changes for qualifying. I was panicking right up until I started that first lap and realised the car had come good again.

"Big credit to the team because they’ve worked hard today."

Despite his issues throughout practice, Tordoff feels he's gained a good understanding of how his Honda Civic Type-R will fare over a race distance and is confident of his race pace.

"I think we’ve understood the car this afternoon so I’m not particularly worried about race pace tomorrow. I think we’ll have a good car," Tordoff continued.

"You always give yourself a great chance when you qualify on the front row.

"There’s a few quick drivers up there and no RWD cars, which makes a nice change. I expected the factory Honda of Dan to be ahead so that makes it all the more sweeter."

Having suffered a fair degree of bad luck during the opening part of the season, Tordoff has been on a good run of form of late and believes another three top-six finishes will put him 'firmly back in the hunt'. 

Since qualifying second and finishing fifth in race one at Oulton Park prior to the summer break, Tordoff has finished no longer than sixth, which has propelled the AmD driver back towards the fringes of the top-ten standings.

"I think we’re long overdue. We’ve been fast for a lot of this year and we’ve had some bad luck to start with. We haven’t finished less than sixth for the last two rounds so we’re slowly chipping away," said the Honda driver.

"Another three top six finishes will put us firmly back in the hunt."