Gordon Shedden is expecting a titanic battle to retain his British Touring Car Championship crown in the series finale this afternoon at Brands Hatch, with the Scot now just two points adrift of championship leader Sam Tordoff.
‘Flash’ was able to make steady progress in the middle contest en route to a podium finish in third, and for the majority of the latter stages even looked a headache for Silverline Subaru BMR Racing’s Jason Plato ahead, though the Scot eventually conceded to his rival.
With Tordoff marginally further back in fifth, the latter will start ahead of Shedden with a points advantage by virtue of the reverse grid rule for the final round.
Speaking to TouringCars.net shortly after stepping from the podium, Shedden explained his objective all day had been to attack as much as possible, and conceded it stands as a tall order to expect a title victory from here.
“I’ve been doing that all day! I’ve thrown everything at it, it’s going to be tough. To finish in front of him will be bloody hard, because you know for sure he’ll do everything he possibly can to stop me passing, but I’ll keep on going and you never know. Anything can happen.
“My car feels good in a lot of areas, so I’ll try and put it to good use.”
He also admitted he had been pushing in the second race to catch Plato, rather than conserve position in third with the title at stake. His reasoning was simple; points means prizes.
“If the opportunity was there, you’ve got to take every point. But I think he [Plato] was playing a little bit, protecting Colin [Turkington], because obviously Colin’s right back in the mix as well. There’s still a lot of twists and turns to go yet.”
The final race of the season gets underway at 17:32, with Shedden starting fifth.