Contesting your first full British Touring Car Championship season with a factory-backed team when that manufacturer has recently returned to the series after a decade away can be quite a daunting scenario.
It’s one in which Sam Tordoff found himself back in 2013 when he joined the Triple Eight-run MG squad. But, fortunately for Tordoff – who was at least familiar with the team after contesting the 2010 BTCC finale as a one-off outing – there was someone with mountains of experience to call upon in the sister MG6 GT.
Jason Plato may be a Marmite character and considered the BTCC’s pantomime villain in some quarters, but Tordoff believes he was the perfect driver to have alongside for his full-time bow.
“That was an eye-opener!” recalls Tordoff, who had finished third in the 2012 Porsche Carrera Cup GB. “I learned a hell of a lot over the two [MG] years – not all stuff about the track, just as much about off the track as well!
“But, just for all-round experience, I probably didn’t appreciate it at the time, but now looking back, Jason was in his pomp then – that was proper prime Jason in his heyday – and I had a great two years.”
Unsurprisingly, Plato hit the ground running, having won six races in the MG’s first campaign in 2012. He triumphed in the following season’s first two races in the MG6, but Tordoff also enjoyed an encouraging start at Brands Hatch with two top-five results followed by a reversed-grid podium. His maiden victory arrived at Snetterton later in the year, and Tordoff ended up a respectable sixth in the standings.
Tordoff continued with Triple Eight the following season and, over his two-year MG spell, qualifying for the Rockingham 2014 event particularly stands out.
“We did a 1-3 and I was on pole by a country mile [0.484 seconds] – I did a lap that I never repeated in my entire career!” he says. “Whatever I did in that one lap at Rockingham was special.”
Tordoff and Plato went their separate ways at the end of the season, the veteran departing to drive a Team BMR Volkswagen CC while Tordoff switched to a West Surrey Racing BMW. And Tordoff certainly put what he had learned from Plato to good use when he finished a close runner-up to Gordon Shedden in 2016.
"I learned a hell of a lot over the two [MG] years – not all stuff about the track, just as much about off the track as well!"
Sam Tordoff
But his BTCC career came to an abrupt halt partway through 2019, when family tragedy struck. Tordoff has since concentrated on racing in historics but made his first outing at a BTCC event in five years at the end of July when he dominated all three Classic Touring Car Racing Club Pre-’66 tin-top contests at Croft in his Ford Falcon.
“In some respects, nothing has changed – it’s still all the same people and the same faces,” Tordoff says of his return. “But it’s nice to come back and see a few friendly faces and put on a show.”
