Race three podium “small consolation” for Shedden

Reigning champion Gordon Shedden was left cursing his back luck at the Brands Hatch Indy circuit once again, after a testing opening round of the British Touring Car Championship season.

The Honda Racing Team driver finished the weekend with second place in the final race, but said it was “small consolation” for the other woes he encountered.

After qualifying his Honda Civic on the front row, Shedden had a huge slide at Paddock Hill on the opening lap of race one, which he managed to catch.

After fighting his way back through to Matt Neal’s tail, he had to take to the grass at Clearways to avoid his team-mate, who had just been passed by Sam Tordoff’s MG. This necessitated a pit stop to clear the radiator, and he came home 19th.

After battling all the way through the pack to third in race two, Shedden was then excluded from the results for failing the ride height check.

It meant another battle from the back, during which he went one better than race two and finished second, including a double pass on Tordoff and Adam Morgan’s Cicely Racing Toyota Avensis to move into the podium places.

Shedden said to TouringCarTimes: “It seems to be the way with me at Brands Hatch. Brands Indy has never been a happy hunting ground for me. I haven’t won a race here since I started touring cars.

“I was annoyed after race two, but it is how you come back from it, and I thought I drove a good race in race three.

“It was a clean race and I maximised my performance.

“I think we have shown the pace is in the car. We have got to look to the weather and say that plays a part in it, and maybe we didn’t optimise in some weather conditions – such as when it snowed on the grid!”

Shedden and Neal both ran the soft tyre in the final race, along with the majority of the front running cars.

Regarding the performance of the tyre, Shedden said: “Given that most people were on them, I couldn’t say I was worse than anyone else. The pace was still strong at the end of the race.

“It is nice to finish on a bit of a positive, but it is a small consolation for everything else that’s happened today.”