Unexpected points haul boosts Gordon Shedden

Gordon Shedden insisted that he hadn’t expected to score so strongly at Rockingham after three solid finishes allowed him to close to within 20 points of the BTCC points lead.

The defending champion produced an impressive performance in qualifying to snare pole in his Honda Civic Type-R and then backed it up with a strong lights-to-flag victory in race one.

Tenth spot was the best he was able to do on the hard tyre and with maximum ballast in race two, but a strong performance on track in the final race saw the Scot battle his way forwards to run second behind the VW of Aron Smith.

Shedden’s chance of challenging for a second win of the day would ultimately be ended by the fact he was forced to pay attention to keep the charging Subaru of Colin Turkington at bay, but a seventh podium of the campaign provided more solid points at the end of a strong weekend.

“I don’t think we expected that from the weekend, and I must have scored more points than anyone else has done,” he said. “We’ve closed the gap to the leader, we have a car that is still in one piece, and now we can look to go again at Silverstone.

“Race one was good as when you are at the front, you are able to control things and it all works in your favour but race two was a challenge on the hard tyre and with the weight. It meant we had to work hard in race three to get back to the front and I think we could possibly have won if I hadn’t had to defend to keep Colin behind. All credit to Aron though as he did a great job out front and made sure he was putting me in the wrong place so I had to be mindful of the car behind.

“In hindsight, the only thing we could have done different this weekend is change how we used the tyres, but I know why I have left myself with the options I have for the final two rounds and it’s important to look at the end game.”