Burning bridges

Gordon Shedden’s unexpected departure from British Touring Cars upset the status quo in ways nobody could have anticipated

ON THURSDAY MORNING LAST WEEK, THE BOSSES of Team Dynamics put out a press release announcing that Porsche star Dan Cammish had been signed as Gordon Shedden’s replacement in the factory-backed Honda squad in the British Touring Car Championship for the 2018 season.

Within 24 hours the chiefs of rival BTCC team Motorbase Performance issued a terse statement, saying that they and stalwart driver Mat Jackson had “parted company”.

That was quite a surprise, because 31-time race winner Jackson had been paraded at the Autosport International Show in the middle of January as a leading light of the Motorbase attack with its restyled Ford Focus RS machines alongside Tom Chilton. The team had also recently been bolstered by the arrival of former championship runner-up Sam Tordoff.

Are the announcements from Team Dynamics and Motorbase linked? Of course they are – although neither party is likely to admit it in an open forum.

Ever since Shedden announced his decision to leave the BTCC and head off to the revamped World Touring Car Cup this year – a move he finally completed last week by joining the WRT Audi attack – Team Dynamics has been on the prowl for a replacement.

Dynamics was in a tricky position. Co-owner, driver and three-time champion Matt Neal had done the magnanimous thing by not holding Shedden to his commitments with the squad, and instead let his friend go and chase a golden opportunity. But that left a ‘Flash’-sized hole in the Honda line-up in the UK.

Neal said, at the time, that Honda was desperate to get a driver who could hit the ground running, a racer it could “plug in” to what will be a newly built Civic Type R for this season and win straight away. When anyone puts that caveat in their demands for a new driver, the options narrow considerably.

Despite that, Neal was bombarded by likely candidates, all of whom fancied what is one of the plum drives on the grid. Shedden took three titles with the team, and the car has been among the best-engineered machines on the grid for nearly a decade. Who wouldn’t want to take this golden opportunity?

Now for the sticky bit that ultimately led to the situation that unfolded last week: alongside the avalanche of enquiries that Team Dynamics fielded in the aftermath of Shedden’s decision, there was contact between Neal and Jackson. It is unclear who instigated it, but they did talk about Jackson joining the Honda factory team as Neal’s team-mate.

Since Jackson had already agreed a race deal – whether it was signed or not – with Motorbase, there was some delicate negotiation to be done. But when Motorbase boss David Bartrum was informed, he was furious. He wanted to protect his team, his commercial interests and the line-up he thought he had already nailed down. Things quickly got very heated.

Jackson was always going to be near the top of anyone’s list as a BTCC driver. During his 11 years in the championship, he has been a consistent frontrunner. He hates the statistic, but he has more BTCC wins than any other non-champion.

He’s been around the BTCC block, and has helped Motorbase turn itself from a customer team into a car builder in its own right. He’s been at the forefront of all its new projects with the Ford Focus, and that has given him a good instinct for developing a car. But he’s never brought a big budget; there are drivers out there with deeper pockets, but Motorbase was loyal to his abilities and retained his services for the longer term.

Whatever the background to the deal, Jackson and Honda could not reach an agreement, which left Dynamics to secure the services of two-time Porsche Carrera Cup GB title winner Cammish.

He’s a driver with huge potential, and one who has the ability to step up to the next level in the BTCC in terms of his profile.

For Motorbase, there was still a big hurdle to get over. Bartrum says he wanted to keep Jackson and that there was some to-ing and fro-ing. But the relationship had broken down to such a degree that it all fell apart. Bridges had been burned and it seems there was no way to rebuild them, no matter what the desire from either side.

Whoever was in the right and wrong inevitably depends on who you talk to. That will probably always be the case, and it has left a considerable amount of bad feeling.

What it has also left in its wake is a conundrum of mixed emotions for the fans too. There is the excitement of seeing Cammish finally flourish on a high-profile platform, but the series will be without Jackson, who has been one of its strongest performers over the past decade.

It also means Bartrum has a prime drive on the grid to offer in one of his redeveloped Fords, which could also lead to some exciting news in the future. Expect that vacancy to be filled very rapidly. This story isn’t quite finished yet.

Shedden’s depature from the BTCC paddock was likely to create a number of ripples, but the water is still unsettled more than a month later.

“What it has left in its wake is a conundrum of mixed emotions for fans”