REIGNING British Touring Car champion Gordon Shedden admits he’s got a “mountain to climb” in his bid to claim another historic title.

The 38-year-old, who is based at Knockhill as the circuit’s business development manager, travels to iconic Silverstone this weekend for the penultimate round of the championship looking to keep hopes of a third success in a row – which no man has achieved in the modern era – in the fast lane.

‘Flash’ will be hoping that the track most commonly associated with Formula One will provide more spoils than last time out at Rockingham, where his title chances took a severe blow.

Shedden went into that race weekend smarting from being knocked off the top of the standings at his home circuit by Team BMW’s Colin Turkington and misfortune conspired to keep the Halfords Yuasa Racing star – and team-mate Matt Neal – off the podium in Northamptonshire.

The West Fife-based driver, who is looking for his fourth championship trophy overall, struggled with 57kg of success ballast on board his Honda Civic Type R, restricting him to 16th in qualifying.

A puncture during race one prompted an unscheduled trip to the pit lane and then, in race two, he was making up ground from the back of the field before a coming together with Rob Austin, resulting in a failure to finish.

Shedden did produce a gritty display to fight his way through the field and take 12th in the final race of the weekend but admits events at Rockingham have dented his aspirations.

He heads to Silverstone third in the standings with 257 points, 55 behind leader Ashley Sutton, but has overcome a deficit to take glory before.

In each of the last two seasons, he’s come from behind to take the trophy in the final race of the campaign, and Shedden said: “Our first objective has to be to immediately fight back because not very much went right for us at Rockingham – but one of the inherent strengths of this team is our ability to come out punching when our backs are against the wall.

“From where we are in the championship, we have to push flat-out and whilst as a circuit, Silverstone doesn’t necessarily suit our strengths – it’s essentially just a series of straights – such is the wildly unpredictable nature of the BTCC that you genuinely never know what’s going to happen.

“We came from behind last year to win the title and although it’s clearly a bigger mountain to climb this season, I can guarantee you we will be giving it 100 per cent all the way to the final chequered flag.”

He added: “Rockingham is notoriously difficult when you have ballast in the car, and that was reflected in both qualifying and race one when we very clearly struggled for speed, which was frustrating.

“We were coming through the pack in race two until the contact, which damaged the suspension, and we did our best in race three but it was always going to be a tall order to get much further up the field than we did.

“We’ve lost some ground in the championship and it’s fair to say the situation is not looking particularly rosy right now but as everybody knows, the BTCC can turn on a sixpence and nothing is over yet, so we will keep on fighting to the very end.”

The penultimate round of the 2017 British Touring Car Championship takes place this weekend at Silverstone, with the final race weekend scheduled for Brands Hatch GP on September 30-October 1.