Sam Tordoff chasing “overdue victory” from pole

Sam Tordoff says his focus for race day is firmly on challenging for a first victory of the BTCC season after qualifying on pole for the second time this year at Thruxton.

The Cobra Sport AmD driver repeated his performance from round three of the campaign back in May after battling back from a challenging start to the weekend, when a suspension failure left him parked on the side of the circuit in FP1.

Struggling for front-running pace in the second session, Tordoff then benefited form a series of changes to his Honda Civic Type R to edge Jason Plato and Dan Cammish out of pole position by less than a tenth of a second, with his aim being to try and now secure the victory he missed earlier in the season after picking up a power steering issue whilst leading.

“It’s been an interesting day as the car has been a lot different to what it was back in May when we came here,” he said. “I was genuinely worried ahead of qualifying as nothing had worked. We’d had a suspension failure in FP1, were down on mileage and were scratching our heads wondering why.

“We made some big changes to both cars ahead of qualifying and it was going to go one of two ways pretty spectacularly, and luckily it was in a positive way. I’m pleased to get pole again and it shows the strength of the car round here. I honestly expected Dan to get pole so it’s nice for us to get ahead of them with the older Civic.

“The focus now is to try and secure that overdue win. We were robbed last time with the power steering issues that ruined our day, so there is unfinished business.”