Sam Tordoff says he would ‘happily’ skip ahead to next season after a frustrating triple-header at Rockingham last weekend put a serious dent in his British Touring Car Championship title hopes.
The Motorbase Performance racer’s comeback season has thus far been a string of bad luck, with no podium finishes to show from his position as the championship’s best average qualifier in 2018.
He threatened to seize the lead from pole-sitter Adam Morgan in the opening race last weekend, only to be tagged by Dan Cammish’s Honda Civic Type R at Deene Hairpin; and then hit whilst stationary by an unsighted Andrew Jordan’s BMW and the sister Dynamics car of Matt Neal before retiring.
He fought back to 18th in the middle contest on the harder compound tyre before claiming fourth in the reverse grid finale – just 0.009 seconds from taking the final spot on the podium at the chequered flag.
“It was all a bit bittersweet really, because we should have had way more than one P4 finish this weekend, but that’s the way it’s going for us at the moment,” said Tordoff to TouringCars.net
“I’m gutted once again, we’ve not achieved anything that we should have done. We had super pace and nothing to show for it.
“The last three rounds are pretty pointless from my perspective, because we aren’t going to achieve anything now that we set out to this year.
“If we could fast-forward to March 2019 right now, I’d happily do that.”
Reflecting on his surge through the field in the last race, Tordoff admitted that pushing early on reduced his opportunity to mount a fightback at the end of the race with degrading medium tyres.
“We benefited because we took the pain in race two of running the hard tyre,” he explained.
“We came through fantastically well. When I reached Colin [Turkington], I sort of got stuck then and whilst fighting my medium tyres started to degrade and I lost the edge that I had, but that was just because I pushed so hard at the start.
“Then Colin’s hard tyres started to come in later in the race so I lost touch with him and I thought fourth was the best it was going to be, but then I saw the guys ahead starting to struggle with their mediums.
“There was a bit of argy-bargy on the last lap and I thought I was going to get a podium, but [we missed out by] nine thousandths…”
Looking ahead to the next meeting at Knockhill, Tordoff expects a tall order to beat the BMW 1-series and Subaru Levorg – both of which have a strong record at a circuit that inherently suits their cars – but takes comfort in their pace relative to their front-wheel drive opposition.
“We’re ballast-free, so we have to go there and try and be on the front row again. It is a rear-wheel drive circuit, and the BMWs and Subarus will be strong, but we take some consolation in being one of the fastest front-wheel drive cars with no weight.”
The series reconvenes in Fife over the weekend of 25-26 August.