Honda Yuasa Racing celebrate two titles at Brands Hatch finale

Honda Yuasa Racing were relishing in their “cracking result” at the end of the 2015 season, taking both the Drivers’ and Manufacturers’ championships at a dramatic Brands Hatch finale.

The team went in to the weekend with Gordon Shedden holding a 23 point lead over title rival Jason Plato, while the team had a 64 point advantage over MG/Triple Eight Racing in the manufacturers’ title.

While it was a relatively simple result in the manufacturers’ standings, pulling another nine points clear at the final drop of the chequered flag, things weren’t as easy for Shedden, who had to come back from 19th on the grid to finish fourth in race three to beat Plato by just four points at the line.

“You’ve got to be pleased,” Honda Yuasa Racing Technical Director Barry Plowman told TouringCarTimes. “With a new car, not everybody gets it going well in the first year. Brand new car, in its first season, cracking result to come first and third and to win the manufacturers, happy days.

“There were some tense moments at some stages, especially getting towards the end – we brought Matt back to sit behind him to get him the points he needed and he started attacking Jack Goff. We had to tell him to leave him alone, but it was a good effort.”

Shedden’s performance also gained a lot of praise from Team Principal and founder Steve Neal, who had a wealth of good words to say of his driver after everything calmed down from the hectic race three.

“I’m absolutely delighted for him,” Neal told TouringCarTimes. “I think the majority of them recognise him as the best driver out there. You put him in any car, we’ve seen him doing this bit of classic car racing where he jumps in an E Type he’s never seen before and he smashes the lap record with it it’s unbelievable. Whatever he gets in he’s good.”

Although the season has only just finished, attention now turns to preparing the cars to defend the title in 2016, with a lot of work expected to go in to the building and testing with the new RML parts due over the winter.

“We’ll be looking at all parts of the car,” said Plowman. “[There’s] a new TOCA kit to look at and test the RML kits, we’ve all ordered that. But like anything there’s no saying that’ll be good straight off, it’ll take some looking at. That’s obviously on our agenda, some small revisions for our aero stuff.

“I have to say we’d be fairly confident [going in to 2016], if we started the season where we finished off with the car we’d have been even stronger. It’s been a tough ride, there’s been a lot of very competitive cars this year. It’s been the first year we haven’t had pluses and minuses with lap time calculation but we’ve had more weight to contend with. so nobody had an advantage on that because everyone was starting at point one.”

Plowman was also highly complimentary of the championship as a whole, believing that the new regulations brought in for 2015 have been a success, and has built the basis for a very strong future.

“We all came in with zero weight, after race one we all got a load thrown in and everyone went ‘ooh, this is different’, that was a learning curve for everybody. But it has made the championship a lot more competitive and a lot more people can win.”

“The series is going from strength to strength, you can’t knock it. there were comments earlier in the year with the handicapping being unfair for some people but it shows it works, the right people are still at the front end of the championship and you’ve got a lot of good youngsters coming up who are learning the trade. If you gave some of the newcomers a car with 75kg with it they probably wouldn’t learn as quickly because they’ll be driving around at the back and wouldn’t improve their race craft as they wouldn’t be mixing it at the front. The championship’s awesome at the minute.”