Gordon Shedden was left happy with his mornings work after placing second in the opening Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship practice session of the weekend at Donington Park, with the reigning champion clocking a fastest lap time of 1:11.030 to finish just 0.045 seconds behind MG’s Josh Cook.
The Halfords Yuasa Racing driver managed a total of fifteen laps in the fragmented forty minute session, which was red-flagged twice due to incidents for the Eurotech duo of Jeff Smith and Martin Depper, and later as Matt Simpson went off at Redgate in the closing stages.
The 2012 and 2015 series winner felt the opening session of the weekend was productive, but bemoaned the stoppages which curtailed a large part of his running as the track got faster in the latter stages.
“It’s early days yet but it’s OK,” he commented.
“We were just trying to find the balance as everyone else was trying to do but it went decently,”
“It didn’t help that it was a bit of a fragmented session with a couple of incidents throwing red flags. I think we need to take another step forward but it’s a decent place to start. We’ll reload and go again in FP2.”
The second session gets underway at 12:50, in which Shedden will be keen to hone in on an optimum setup for qualifying later this afternoon.