Gordon ‘Flash’ Shedden was back in the office at Knockhill this week as he continued his role as business development manager at the Fife circuit. But in between meetings, Gordon took time to chat with Jim McGill about the opening weekend at Thruxton and the 125mph crash which wrecked his Honda Racing Team Civic and ended his progress to a win in race one.
JM: You started from pole position for the opening race of the season, but then it all went horribly wrong. Talk me through the race, and the crash.
GS: It was all unexpected, to say the least. The car was so hooked up; it was so fast, especially through the very fast corners out the back of the circuit. I just rolled out three or four laps at the same lap time, so it wasn’t as if I was seeing any drop-off in terms of performance or pace. To be fair, I was just thinking “this is so great; I’ll just manage the car to the end” because I’d opened up a three-second lead without having to do anything too demanding for the car.
I was three seconds up the road and not having to work particularly hard; I was just going round ticking off the laps and then, bang, from nowhere I was heading towards a tyre wall at Church, one of the fastest corners on the track, at more than 125mph.
It caught me totally unawares, but when a front tyre goes down like that you have zero control. And on the wet grass, the car didn’t really slow down at all until I hit the tyres.
The impact was 125?
Yes, 125mph, or around 200km/h, so it was a pretty massive accident.
What goes through your mind in those few seconds when you can see the tyre wall coming?
It wasn’t actually that bad this time. Sometimes it’s a case of: “God, this is going to hurt.” I think this time I was in shock. I was thinking: “I can not believe I’ve got a puncture.” It was one of those “this can not be happening” moments.
And then you get to the point of impact, the dust settles and your mind and body comes to terms with the fact it’s stopped so suddenly from 125mph, and you think: “Hmm, that wasn’t so clever.”
But there was nothing I could have done to avoid the crash. Then it was a case of radioing back to the team to tell them what had happened and try to give them a quick resume of the parts the guys were going to need to rebuild the car.
The guys in Team Dynamics who prepare the Honda Racing Team Civic only had 90 minutes to repair the car before the second race. How many parts did they need to replace?
Most of them. They’d to replace the full right-hand side of the car; doors, cells, wing, uprights at the front, suspension, full front-end, bonnet, radiator, air-intakes brake cooling, flatfloor … the list just goes on and on.
By the time they got the car back to the garage, they actually had less than 90 minutes to do the repairs.
So I guess the first time you drove the car next was from the garage, round the track to the grid for the start of the second race?
Yes.
But to be fair, I was just absolutely delighted to be back in the car. The boys had done a fantastic job. It never, ever crossed my mind to think something wasn’t right with the car; they wouldn’t let me drive it if they’d had even the slightest concern about the car’s safety. I have total, complete faith in everything the boys do with the car.
And just like race one, in fact perhaps even moreso, you have to be ready to push the car to its limits right from the first lap in race two. The same goes for race three.
When I think about it, it never even crossed my mind that I might get another puncture again in race two. You just have to focus on exactly what you’re doing.
We struggled to get a good set-up for race two, simply because, in all honesty, the car was still a little bit wounded. But again it was bloody quick.
Then the progress continued in the final race?
Yeh, started 11th and finished fourth; just missed a podium. It turns out also that one of the sensors in the exhaust which regulates the fuel mix had been damaged in the first race impact. We never discovered it until after race three. As a result we’d been running the car too rich, which meant we were probably about 10bhp down on power for both races. So if I’d have had that I’d have got a podium easily.
Now though I’m focussing on the next round at Rockingham in a fortnight. I know we have a quick car and I love the circuit, so hopefully we’ll have a bit more luck.
JM