Gordon Shedden: ‘We’ve clawed our way back’ after tough qualifying

Gordon Shedden ‘clawed’ his way back up the British Touring Car Championship order at Croft, claiming two top ten finishes and a podium after having qualified down in 17^th on Saturday.

A challenging qualifying session saw the Team Dynamics driver end up down in 17^th on the grid for race one, after his lap was lamost six tenths of a second off the pace on Saturday.

However, Shedden made up seven places in the opening race, claiming tenth at the chequered flag, to set himself up with a stronger position for race two.

Running the soft tyre for race two, Shedden made up three places at the start before then muscling his way past Ash Sutton for sixth on lap 11, followed by taking fifth from Tom Ingram a lap later.

On lap 13, Shedden tried to pass Colin Turkington for fourth at Turn 1, but the pair went wide and allowed Sutton back through, with Shedden ultimately finishing the race in sixth.

With the top seven reversed for race three, that gave Shedden a front-row starting position. Unable to match race-winner Turkington’s pace, Sheden drove a defensive race to hold on to second ahead of Sutton, and pick up his fifth podium finish of the season.

“I’ll take a tenth, a sixth and a second,” said Shedden. “Qualifying is now so critical in this championship, and I just literally ran out of laps with the red flags, it was wrong time, wrong place!

“It was a tough day [on Saturday], down in 17^th, but we clawed our way through and it’s a great reward for everyone at Team Dynamics.

“I’m really pleased with my performance [on Sunday], steadily moving up the field and grabbing myself a good haul of championship points.

“My start in race three was probably the best I have done all season and saw me challenging Colin into Turn one, so again chuffed with that result and a podium.

“We’re here on the podium and it looked a million miles away and there’s nothing like having ten or eleven laps of Ash Sutton on the back bumper the whole way through just to focus the mind.

“He’s got a championship to win and that has to be his focus. He’s not racing me in the championship, and I need every point I can get, so he needs to think of the bigger picture, which he did.

“He had a couple of goes, but there were a couple of places where I was strong, and I could cover it off a bit.

“But we’ll probably all leave reasonably happy with that result.

“We now move onto Silverstone this weekend, so no rest for the guys back at base and I’ll be giving it my all again to repay them for all their hard work!”

Shedden leaves Croft sixth overall in the drivers’ championship standings, 82 points adrift of the top of the table as the highest-placed driver yet to win a race in 2021.