Gordon Shedden: “The championship situation isn’t looking rosy”

Reigning champion Gordon Shedden has admitted the prospects of a fourth drivers’ championship title aren’t looking good after his worst race weekend in two years at the Rockingham Motor Speedway.

The Team Dynamics Honda driver qualified in 16th for the Race 1, but found himself eliminated from the first two races of the day after incidents with West Surrey Racing’s Rob Collard in Race 1, and Handy Motorsport’s Rob Austin in Race 2, both times sustaining damage to the front-right of his Civic Type-R.

“Collard just drove into the side of me and it broke the wheel,” said an upset Shedden after Race 1.

While the Hondas were at the bottom of the speed traps, they were fast on the brakes, leaving their main move a lunge down the inside at the Deene hairpin.

This left them vulnerable to the antics of the driver next to them however, with Triple Eight’s Josh Cook and Honda’s Matt Neal also taken out of Race 2 after contact, which was deemed a racing incident.

From the back of the grid, Shedden and Neal drove through to 12th and 13th to score points, but Shedden’s haul of eight points is his worst since scoring just two at Snetterton in 2015, though he still went on to take the title by four points over Jason Plato.

“Rockingham is notoriously difficult when you have ballast in the car, and that was reflected in both qualifying and Race 1 when we very clearly struggled for speed, which was frustrating,” said Shedden.

“We were coming through the pack in Race 2 until the contact, which damaged the suspension, and we did our best in Race 3 but it was always going to be a tall order to get much further up the field than we did.

“We’ve lost some ground in the championship here and it’s fair to say the situation is not looking particularly rosy right now, but as everybody knows, the BTCC can turn on a sixpence and nothing is over yet, so we will keep on fighting to the very end.”