Honda Racing pair Matt Neal and Gordon Shedden experienced weekends that can only be described as the polar opposite of each other at Snetterton during rounds 16, 17 and 18 of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship.

Shedden took his third victory of the season in the second race of the day and enjoyed a fruitful weekend scoring points in all three races, as he secured third and seventh position finishes in the other two races, to accompany his win. These results have seen Shedden move up to second in the championship standings. He trails Airwaves Racing’s Mat Jackson by just eight points.

Shedden said: “The championship has been so competitive this season that it is vital that you keep racking up the finishes. You can’t afford to drop behind, so coming away from this weekend with 30 points has been perfect.

“After finishing third in the first race, I thought a victory might be on the cards in race two and I just concentrated on hitting the front as soon as I could. When the chance came at the second corner, I just grabbed it and it was pretty comfortable thereafter. The Civic has an excellent chassis and that meant that even though I had 27kgs of success ballast, I was still able to draw away as I pleased.”

For Neal on the other hand it turned out to be a weekend to forget in most respects. He went into the weekend leading the championship but contact with defending champion Jason Plato on the opening lap sent him into a spin and meant he finished well outside of the points in eighteenth, allowing his title rivals to close the gap to him in the standings. In the second race Neal’s fortunes looked to have changed as he quickly set about making up ground from eighteenth on the grid and found himself as high as sixth, only for a puncture to strike and leave him with zero points from the first two races. A determined drive from seventeenth to fourth in the final race was the only highlight of the day and meant that the double champion at least took some points away from the weekend. It wasn’t enough to prevent him from losing the championship lead though, and he now sits third, ten points behind Jackson.

Neal said: “I am angry because my chances were spoiled by an avoidable incident in race one which also put me at the back for race two, so that was two big points scoring opportunities gone. I was happy to get back to fourth in race three but when you consider what we should have been able to achieve here, I am annoyed. Still, there are plenty of races to go and we will work extremely hard to make up the ground we have lost here.”

The championship continues at Knockhill on the weekend of the 3^rd and 4^th of September.

Photo Credit: Pete Mainey ( http://www.psmmotorsportimages.co.uk/)

Tom Surgay is the Porsche Carrera Cup GB correspondant for 2011. Tom's currently studying English Language with Journalism at Huddersfield University. You can contact him at tom@btcccrazy.co.uk or on twitter @tsurgay.