Fifer Shedden to race in BTCC openerposted in BTCC03 | 04 | 2011
FIFER GORDON SHEDDEN will take his place at the back of the grid for the opening round of the British Touring Car Championship at Brands Hatch after his Honda team worked overnight to rebuild his Civic.
The 31-year-old from Dalgety Bay suffered a horrific high-speed impact, which generated 10G of forces when he hit the tyres wall at Paddock Hill Bend during yesterday morning's free practice.
Immediately after the accident, which was caused by a cut tyre, Shedden's hopes of racing today appeared impossible; but that was before his Honda crew got their hands on the wrecked car.
"It was in kit form when they got it back to the garage," Shedden explained today. "Obviously it was a very severe accident yesterday. Looking at the data it was more than 10G of impact, and it obviously caused an awful lot of damage.
"But the guys at Honda have worked a miracle overnight. They basically started as soon as they got the car back in the garage at 10.15 yesterday morning and worked through till 1am this morning.
"Then they were back in working again at 6am today; how on earth they built a race car out of the pile of scrap which came back in after free practice yesterday I'll never know.
"It's a miracle what they've achieved. Martin and Tom and the rest of the Honda crew have all gone the extra mile to make sure I was on the grid for the first race of the season the car was wrecked.
"Don't underestimate the challenge they had. Make no mistake, that car was scrap yesterday.They've basically grafted a whole new front-end on to the car. It's amazing to see how they did it, but everything's been changed from the bulkhead forward, because obviously we're not allowed spare cars, and how they did it I genuinely don't know.
"But it's massive testament to them. I said to a couple of the guys yesterday, "we obviously want to build a very, very fast car", but it's at times like this that I'm so pleased the little Honda is also a very, very, safe car, as I discovered yesterday."
Keep up-to-date with all the latest news by following us on twitter.com/scotcars
Jim McGill