Gordon Shedden pleased with second in opening race

Gordon Shedden was pleased to come away from the first round with a podium result after a race-long duel with eventual winner Tom Ingram.

Shedden was right on the bumper of Ingram before the safety car period, but once the race resumed Ingram pulled away and Shedden couldn’t find himself close enough to make a realistic challenge for the lead.

“That is a good result,” Shedden told TouringCarTimes. “I think we weren’t quite there on set-up and everything was ebbing and flowing. It was an interesting race because I had the pace to run with him but when I got too close I lost a little aero so it was a tough one to judge.”

Despite missing out on the top step of the podium, Shedden was delighted to see Ingram make his first visit to the top step, and is turning his attention to going one better in race two.

“He had track position and that proved to be enough but I am over the moon for Tom, you can see what it means to him on the podium. We will see what we can do now in the second race because we have a little less ballast than Tom and we aren’t using the soft tyre.”

The reigning champion came close to taking the lead from Ingram in the first five laps, with the race leader getting held up by backmarker Mark Howard, but the safety car came out before Shedden could capitalise on the situation.

“That could have been a very big accident and it wasn’t that he was just a little bit slow; it seemed as though he was in a lower gear because we caught him in the blink of an eye.”