A return to the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship for 2018 has seen Sam Tordoff taste the multiple facets of luck that can happen to any driver in this championship.
The final weekend at Brands Hatch continued the mixed luck for the Team GardX Racing with Motorbase driver as various battles throughout the weekend saw the pink Ford Focus RS battered and bruised. However, Sam also scored points in all three races for only the third time this season.
Seventh at the end of qualifying, the opportunity to continue the momentum from Silverstone was there.
The first race was Sam’s 150th in the BTCC and going ahead Sam managed to get into sixth. However, after being pushed wide at Hawthorns he dropped down to eighth.
After being overtook by Aiden Moffat and Andrew Jordan, Sam unselfishly let by his team-mate Tom Chilton as the latter was trying to go for the independent title. Tordoff would eventually finish in eleventh for race one.
Race two followed a similar script to race one with incredibly close racing action and plenty of bumping and barging. Fourteenth was where the pink Focus was to eventually finish.
Race three saw Sam attempting to end the season on a high and he did so quite spectacularly. On his way to sixth place at the flag, Sam set the fastest lap of the race and also began the hounding of Independent Drivers champion Tom Ingram in the closing laps. However, sixth was where Sam was to finish and it was a great result to enter the Winter break on.
“We finished the day well but it’s been a troublesome weekend.” Admitted Sam at the end of the day,
“We didn’t really have the pace in races 1 and 2 and didn’t quite optimise everything on the car. Whilst the car was quick over 1 lap in qualifying, in the races it was quite difficult.”
Also, Sam looked back at the season and what his aims were ahead of 2019,
“It’s scary how fast the year has gone. It’s a nice environment to race in, the RS has a huge amount of potential and there’s a big wish list to push the car forward and hopefully improve things over the winter.
“There are lots of reasons to be positive for 2019.”
