Sam Tordoff pleased with result in “weird” qualifying session

Sam Tordoff was surprised to come away with third on the grid in qualifying at Oulton Park after putting in a lap that he felt was “miles off” at the time.

The West Surrey Racing driver will line up on the second row behind Subaru’s Colin Turkington and Eurotech’s Daniel Lloyd for the first race in Cheshire, but when he returned to the pits after his first run in qualifying he was sure he would be starting lower down the order.

“It was a very tight session, and a weird one as times were very, very slow and the car seemed a bit all over the place to be honest,” Tordoff told TouringCarTimes. “I was concerned after the first run that we’d be miles off and it felt miles off as I knew what the laptime was. I think the heat changed it for everybody, caught everyone by surprise a little. Laptimes were half a second off last year and what we expected to be, so it was weird in that respect but thankfully it was the same for everybody else.

Oulton Park has become known in recent years for being a circuit that provides little overtaking opportunity, so to qualify on the second row, particularly with the BMW’s slight advantage off the line, puts Tordoff in an enviable position for the first race.

“P3 in a tight grid is perfect for tomorrow with the way Oulton Park is laid out with it being very difficult to overtake, we’ve done ourselves a lot of favours for tomorrow. We have to score big points, we’re a little bit behind in the championship and we have to take advantage of not having so much ballast here this weekend, we’ve done that and we have to score big in the first two races.”