Honda Racing Team’s Gordon Shedden felt his rivals at Snetterton literally disappeared in front of him at times, but finished the day pleased to still be well in the championship race.

The 2012 champion left Norfolk 23 points behind West Surrey Racing’s Colin Turkington, but was left bemoaning his car’s lack of straight-line speed.

Shedden was running the onboard camera throughout the weekend, enabling fans to see Aron Smith’s Volkswagen CC pull several car lengths on the Civic Tourer along the Bentley Straight in race one.

Speaking to TouringCarTimes, Shedden said: “You need three things out of your car, and I’ve got two of them. It goes round the corners fantastically well, and it can stop on a sixpence. There’s one quite obvious element that just hasn’t worked for us.

“”I think I made the best of what I had available. We worked hard as a team, and Matt helped me out as much as possible in qualifying and in race two.

“You’ve got to make the best of your bad weekends. We still scored decent points and stayed out of trouble, and these points might be critical when we get to the end of the year.”

Like Jason Plato in his call for rear-wheel drive restrictions, Shedden said he was conscious of being viewed as a “moaner.”

He said: “Everyone think’s your moaning, but you’re not. I’m not even close enough to have a go. All you want is a level playing field, so you can have a dig. But we just can’t. We don’t have enough power – that’s the bottom line.

“With Smith in race one, I was tucked up under his bootlid coming onto the straight, and at the end of the straight they are six car lengths ahead.

“This is our livelihoods, it’s what pays the mortgage, and we don’t want to be made to look silly.”