Gordon Shedden believes that ‘the potential is there’ in his new Audi RS3 LMS, after he scored a top ten finish in the opening FIA World Touring Car Cup (WTCR) race in Morocco.
The triple BTCC champion showed his pace on Saturday, qualifying in seventh and going on to finish fifth in the first-ever WTCR race.
Race two proved to be harder, with the Scot missing out on the reverse grid and qualifying in 11th, where he would ultimately finish on the tight street circuit.
Things then got even harder in race three, when a brake problem took the 39-year-old out of the running whilst he was on the edges of the top ten.
Despite two difficult races following a promising first encounter, Shedden was positive about his performance on the world level at the weekend.
“It was a really positive weekend,” said Shedden. “I was comfortable in Saturday’s race in fifth. The pace was great, and it felt where the car should have been.
“On true pace, we didn’t have a top four car here, but we’re just in that mix behind. That we just missed out on the reversed grid meant it was always going to be difficult.
“It’d been a totally different day if we’d just found a quarter of a tenth of a second in Q2, as the car was quite fast. In the second race I was just stuck in a queue with nowhere to go, and then in race three, we just had brake problems all the way through.
“To score points on my debut is really good; the car’s back in one piece and the potential’s really there.
“It’s going to be good to see how we go in Hungary, which is a very different track to Morocco.”