Winning his first British Touring Car Championship title was always going to take something special from Gordon Shedden, and the Fifer's job got even tougher when he qualified seventh for today's opening race in the triple-header finale.
"I've known all along that getting over the finish line was never going to be straightforward," the 33-year-old from Dalgety Bay said. "So, really, this isn't much of a surprise."
With the top 13 cars covered by less than a second, Shedden's best time of 1min 32.223sec left him 0.608sec off the pole time set by Tom Onslow-Cole in his BMW.
"I'd love to have gone more quickly," added Shedden, bidding to become the first Scot to win the BTCC title since Galashiels' John Cleland in 1995. "But that was as much as I could have got out of the car. Remember, I'm running with 45kg of 'success' ballast; my two main rivals have 36 and 27kg."
Those two rivals – his Honda team-mate Matt Neal, and Jason Plato in an MG – qualified third and fifth respectively.
"From a positive perspective, at least I can keep an eye on what they're both doing," Shedden said, "but there's no denying I'd have rather been in front of them. Ideally I'd like to finish right on Plato's bumper, or ahead of him, in the first race. After that we can reassess our strategy for races two and three. But as I've said all week, it's going to be a really tough three races."
Plato, Shedden's closest rival – 15 points adrift with a maximum of 66 available today – finished qualifying stuck in the gravel, seconds after the chequered flag.
But the Oxford-based driver, who has won seven times at the Brands Hatch grand prix track, is fired up to wrestle the title from Shedden's grasp.
"This is our circuit: it's perfectly suited to the MG," Plato said. "We're here to win, and we'll be doing everything we can to take the title."
Onslow-Cole secured his first pole position of the season in his BMW, lapping the 2.4-mile Kent circuit in 1min 31.615sec on his final run.
Andrew Jordan's Honda starts second, 0.088sec off pole, with Neal third, 0.301sec back. The defending champion lines up on the second row alongside Onslow-Cole's team-mate Rob Collard.
Fellow Fife driver Rory Butcher starts third in the Porsche Carrera Cup finale. The 25-year-old from Kirkcaldy is bidding to finish third in the championship in his Celtic Speed Porsche 911.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article