Shedden rues race three incident which cost vital points

Gordon Shedden leaves Rockingham just slipping one point to Honda team-mate Matt Neal, holding a joint lead of the championship and taking victory in race two, but could have left with an extended championship lead if not for contact in race three.

After taking a solid win in the second race of the day, driving from sixth to first, snatching the lead from Chevrolet driver Jason Plato on the fourth lap, Shedden was working his way up the field in the third race of the day before he was hit by Nick Foster’s BMW.

The subsequent damage saw Shedden’s Civic slide down the order and well out of the points in 21st place, with his five point lead in the championship taken away with Matt Neal picking up five points for finishing sixth in the race.

“On the whole a positive day, but it could’ve been and should’ve been a bit better,” said Shedden to TouringCarTimes.

“We were struggling a bit with the weight in race one as this place is notoriously hard on tyres, and it wasn’t 45 kilos it was 65 kilos which makes it doubly difficult.”

“As soon as we got a bit of weight out in race two, the thing was on fire. The Civic was great, brilliant. It all looked like it was going to plan in race three…and I just got assulted by (Nick) Foster, just fired me off and broke the right-rear suspension in the car and that was it, race over.”

West Surrey Racing driver Nick Foster, who had a great run all day with the normally aspirated BMW 320si, picking up three top ten finishes, accepted he was at fault for the incident.

“I thought I was sort of beside him, but when I looked at the replay, no Gordon was a little bit ahead and I’d tucked to go up the inside but it was a little bit late,” said Foster to TouringCarTimes.

“With hindsight, it was probably a little bit overambitious so I’m going to apologise to Gordon. I don’t like to tap anyone, don’t really want to have those sort of issues especially when they’re at the front of the field”

“It’s a shame really because in race one there was Matt and Gordon and myself having a real battle all the way through at back end and there wasn’t a tap between anyone, I just like to keep it clean really.”

Shedden and Neal now jointly lead the championship on 204 points, but Jason Plato has now closed in by 11 points over the weekend as is now just 24 points behind (with 15 available for a race win) with six rounds to go at Brands Hatch and Silverstone.

Foster was punished for the clash in a penalty heavy weekend for the championship. Foster received a reprimand and a two-point endorsement on his competition licence, which along with the same penalty for MacDowall’s contact with Andy Neate and Paul O’Neill’s with Rob Austin in race one, was the lowest of the severities handed out at the weekend.