GORDON SHEDDEN believes that grinding out results in difficult circumstances is the key to British Touring Car Championship success after the weekend’s fourth round.

The Dalgety Bay racer maintained second spot in the drivers’ standings with a solid showing at Oulton Park, accumulating 41 points from fourth-, fifth- and second-place finishes.

Although leader Colin Turkington moved nine points ahead of ‘Flash’ in the race for the title, the 2012 champion felt his Honda Civic Tourer performed to its capabilities over the course of the weekend and was happy with his performance.

He told Press Sport, “It’s kind of weird because a lot of people are saying that it wasn’t a great weekend but I’ve won over 40 points.

“To win the championship, sometimes you have to grind out results and I felt the car performed well.

“To end with a podium place was great and I was happy with fourth and fifth as well because we didn’t have the pace to match the BMWs.

“There was a change in the configuration of the track this year that meant less opportunity for overtaking but sometimes you have to maximise the bad days. We’ve got three weeks now before Croft to prepare so we need to just keep getting points.” Good weather conditions made for competitive action but it was the BMWs of Turkington and Rob Collard who coped better in the opening two races, securing successive one-twos, Shedden finishing 7.628 seconds and 6.279s adrift of the winner respectively.

The Knockhill-based driver finally got the better of Turkington in the day’s final race, holding off the Northern Irishman’s challenge to finish just 0.846 seconds behind race winner Aron Smith.

Shedden told Press Sport, “You can see how quickly things can change; Matt Neal (Shedden’s team-mate) didn’t have a great weekend and is quite a bit back in the standings.

“The good thing at this point is that I am in touch with the leaders and I’ve always said that you have to give yourself a chance going into the last weekend of the championship.

“At the moment I’m doing that so we’ll keep going – the importance of keeping in the hunt at this stage of the season really cannot be underestimated.” The fifth round of this year’s BTCC championship takes place over the weekend of 28th and 29th June at the Croft circuit in North Yorkshire.