Gordon Shedden: “We’re not in the same race”

Gordon Shedden admitted to feeling frustrated at the end of race day at Knockhill having dropped out of the BTCC points lead.

The Honda driver went into his home meeting leading the standings but slipped to twelve points behind Colin Turkington after a weekend that saw him fight hard to a seventh podium of the campaign in race three.

Races one and two however had seen the Scot struggling for pace against the rear-wheel drive cars; something he said was a cause for concern as he bids to add another title to his name.

“If I’m being honest, I feel disappointed and frustrated at how the weekend has gone,” he said. “It’s clear that we are not in the same race as some of the other cars and that is tough to bear. The podium looked a long way away this morning and to have got onto it is great, but at the same time, we didn’t do it on pace.

“It’s the same as Snetterton where we fluked a win with the reverse grid. In terms of genuine pace, we are miles off which is both frustrating and worrying in equal measure.

“We are making the best of the situation we are in, but I don’t know what else we can do. The car feels good but then you see cars that have 75kg of ballast setting the fastest lap of a race two laps from the end – and we simply can’t do that.”

Next up, the field heads for Rockingham for round eight, and the defending champion said he saw no reason why things would change in Northamptonshire.

“Rockingham will be much the same; I can’t see how it will be any different,” he said. “We’ll look internally at what we can do and keep pushing on. I’m leaving nothing on the table and everyone in the team is doing the best they can to extract the maxmimum pace from the car – and this is just as fast as it can be at the moment.”