Photo: Jakob Ebrey

Gordon Shedden looking forwards after tough Snetterton weekend

Gordon Shedden insists his focus is on looking forward after a tough start to his BTCC season continued at Snetterton.

The Team Dynamics driver had been in the wars during the season opener at Thruxton, but looks set to bounce back well when he put his Honda Civic on pole position for round two after setting the best time in the second part of qualifying.

However the good fortune wasn’t to last, with Shedden then excluded from the results for failing post-session technical checks.

That left the three-time champion with work to do if he was to get to the front of the field, and he battled hard to get up into 15th spot in race one, scoring a single point in the process.

Shedden followed that up with eleventh in race two, and went into race three as one of only a handful of drivers still to run the soft tyre.

Making the most of the soft compound rubber, Shedden battled his way through to finish in third spot, picking up his first podium since returning to the series in the process.

However, the Scot admitted that he had hoped for more from the first two rounds, and was keen to enjoy a more trouble free weekend at Brands Hatch in two weeks time.

“Sat on the grid, we were a long way from the front after what happened in qualifying, so we have chipped away at it and worked hard,” he said.

“We knew the soft tyre is good round here so I didn’t have any other option than to run it in race three, as I needed to get into a place where I could use the tyre to its advantage. That worked out okay for us although it was frustrating in race one and two when we saw others going up the road, but we knew our time would come.

“It was a bit of a case of what might have been, but to get a podium in race three – and the fastest lap – means hopefully we are going in the right way. You couldn’t have written a worse script for the first two rounds, but it’s good to have a podium and now we just have to look forwards.”