GORDON SHEDDEN WINNING IS ALL I AM INTERESTED IN
Gordon Shedden’s path to the summit of the tin-top world was not one paved with gold. It was one driven through determination, grit and a slice of lottery luck.
He had to work hard to go from the starry-eyed boy watching his British Touring Car Championship heroes trackside at his local venue of Knockhill to scaling the series three times with Honda in 2012, 2015 and 2016.
The Fife Flier, who is now the commercial director at the very same venue, was the benchmark for outright pace and prodigious racecraft in the BTCC for more than a decade before seeking a new challenge in the World TCR category.
When the plug was pulled on that programme, he has been looking around for the next challenge. But Shedden, who has earned a fearsome reputation in the Goodwood events too, says he would not be happy to just make up the numbers. His career so far, and his talent, mean that he wants to race only at the sharp end. He took time out of his busy schedule at Knockhill to tackle the MN readers’questions.
Question: Is it true you got [future BTCC team-mate] Matt Neal’s autograph at Knockhill in the early 1990s when you went to watch the British Touring Car Championship at Knockhill? Was motor racing not in your family?
John Charles Via email
Gordon Shedden: “It is true that I went to the British Touring Car Championship at Knockhill as a kid, but I am not sure about seeing Matt. I remember really liking the BMW drivers at the time, which was Steve Soper and Jo Winkelhock, and I made a beeline to get their autographs. That would have been 1994.”
MN: Was that just a family day out then: it wasn’t that you went to Knockhill regularly?
GS: “Absolutely not. We had just seen it advertised and my parents knew they had a young boy who was really into his cars – I had posters on the wall, Scalextric, toy cars, all the typical stuff. We went along to Knockhill, but I had no idea what it might be all about but it was just amazing, as an event, to go and see.”
MN: You have said before that when you saw the BTCC for the first time, it seemed like a million miles away from something you could actually do in the future…
“That was right: these drivers and teams were heroes.
