A frustrated Gordon Shedden says he will put his weekend in the FIA World Touring Car Cup (WTCR) at the Hungaroring down to experience, after the Audi driver missed out on points in all three races.
Audi drivers in general struggled at the twisty Hungarian circuit, with only Shedden’s Audi Sport Leopard Lukoil team-mate Jean-Karl Vernay able to crack the top ten all weekend for the Ingolstadt marque.
The Scot himself was 18thy, 15th and 12th respectively in the weekend’s three races, and the Scot admits that it has been a frustrating weekend trying to find out what needs to change on the RS3 to make it go quicker.
“We had a couple of different things going on and I think we made some progress in some areas, but ultimately it’s been a frustrating weekend because we’ve just not been in the races,” said Shedden to TouringCars.Net.
“I had reasonable pace in the last race, but not enough and I was just stuck. I got bottled up behind two of the Leóns and that was it. It seems to be there’s a lot of grip on just one line around here, and as soon as you try something different it doesn’t work that well.
“This has just been one to put down to experience and move on. The compensation weights will change after this weekend – and they need to at a minimum.
“It is frustrating across the board, because when you look at it, all the cars are really struggling for the minor placings. Factually, there were only [two] non-Hyundai or Honda cars in the top ten [in race three]. Certainly, our cars were nowhere near.
“It’s frustrating; we were trying a lot of things this weekend but it just isn’t having the effect it needs to.”
Shedden also expressed his surprise with the decision to halt the final race of the weekend at the then-light rain that failed to strengthen until after the race had subsequently restarted and run to completion.
“I was doing somersaults in the car when the rain came half-way through and then they red-flagged it. I would get stop it with the hailstones and monsoon that followed, but a couple of [raindrops]? It was very strange. 100% the racing should have continued – nobody had even run wide let alone fall off!”