Gordon Shedden says he is feeling “chilled” after he claimed a first win of the season during the second Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship race of the day at Brands Hatch.
Shedden led home team-mate Matt Neal and BKR’s Aron Smith to continue the defence of his championship title in strong fashion after securing second in the first race earlier today.
Speaking to TouringCars.net as he stepped off the podium, Shedden also admitted he was pleased the Type R was able to maintain its high level of performance despite being laden with 66 kilos of success ballast.
“I’m quite chilled out about it all at the moment. I thought that we had that sort of pace in the car, so we tweaked the car signficantly. To get that kind of performance with 66kg ballast is good.”
Shedden also felt the race was one of his more relaxing victories, though admits he was cautious when following the battle for the lead between Ingram and Collard that eventually ended in tears at Druids.
“I was [relaxed], but I wasn’t when Tom [Ingram] and [Rob] Collard were knocking ten bells out of eachother on the second lap! That obviously played into our hands and I was lucky not to get taken out, but it worked fine.”
The end of the race brought chaos for many as they fell foul of oil on the racing line at Graham Hill bend on turn in, though Shedden was one of the few that avoided the issue. He admitted to TouringCars.net that, actually, he hadn’t noticed the problem.
“I don’t know if I might just not have been pushing hard enough not to go off at that stage” he joked “by that stage, the last couple of laps were about just getting it home. No need to take any risks.”
“When things go your way, it’s good. It can be easy to push too hard and make a bit of a mess of it.”
Shedden will start the final race of the day from 9th, which is due to get underway at 17:12.