Gordon Shedden was thrilled to have claimed an 11th podium of the British Touring Car Championship season after a determined drive to third in race one.
Losing out to Andrew Jordan on the second lap, Shedden put in a gritty performance to finish third, keeping the Power Maxed Racing Chevrolet Cruze of Dave Newsham – in search of a first podium of the season – at bay during the second half of the 22-lap event.
Speaking after the race, Shedden was relieved to finish the race unscathed and with a podium to his name.
“You’ve got to try and score points wherever you can,” he said when asked by TouringCars.Net about the importance of his result. “I’m not going to roll over and let anybody past, but I’m also trying to finish and there was a little bit of that with Andy at the start.
“He had more pace, which was great actually because I probably got a little bit more of a slipstream and that probably helped my lap time for race two which is great.
“But at the end I desperately didn’t want to give any places away either so there’s a bit of ying and yang. That’s great, [we scored] some great points with 75 [kilograms] on the car.”
The championship leader also said he had been pleased with the feel of his Honda Civic Type-R all weekend, and was looking forward to the changes that his car would undergo ahead of the second encounter.
“We’ve had a really good balance. She was a little bit lively in that race at the start but it looked after it’s tyres well, I got back to Andy [Jordan] which was really good but with the weight there just wasn’t enough grunt in the right places to warrant having a go.
“It certainly looked like the soft tyre was good in that race, I’m certainly looking forward to race two with a bit less ballast and there’ll be a bit of a switch round with weight as well so we’ll see what happens.”
That third place, coupled with a retirement for closest rival Jason Plato on the penultimate lap, means that the 2012 champion now holds a 21-point advantage in the championship battle.
Shedden said he took no pleasure from Plato’s retirement, but insisted that he needed to keep scoring points in the fight for the title to capitalise on his rival’s troubles.
“You want to win fair,” he said. “Obviously we’ve had different races – he hasn’t not finished through anything that I’ve done – so that’s nothing I can change. It’s tough.
“I’ve got to try to just keep scoring points.”