General News

Champ backs volunteer campaign

Reigning Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Champion Gordon Shedden has backed a Motor Sports Association campaign to encourage more people to take up volunteer roles in motor sport.

Shedden joined Colin Hilton, Chief Executive of UK motor sport’s governing body the MSA, to launch the ‘Year of the Volunteer’ on the central stage at the weekend’s Autosport International show.

The initiative will seek to build on the numbers of volunteers who already give up their time to become marshals and officials at the wide variety of motor sport events held every weekend across the UK.

Indeed it was the quick thinking actions of volunteer marshals that helped rescue Shedden’s title-winning season in 2012 when they gallantly extinguished a fire that threatened to engulf his Honda Yuasa Racing Team Civic in the pit lane at Snetterton (pictured).

More information about the MSA’s volunteer ‘recruitment drive’ can be found on its dedicated www.gomotorsport.net website.

Shedden commented: “Volunteers really are a key part of the action and it really is a great way to be involved in this sport.

“At Snetterton my car was a bonfire and, if it hadn’t been for the swift action of some fire marshals, my season would have been over there and then. Whether I won the championship or not came down to those ten seconds.”

“We are celebrating the invaluable work carried out by these all-too-often ‘unsung heroes’ without whom motor sport wouldn’t function, as well as showing others how they can get involved,” explained Hilton. “Every year there are more than 5,000 motor sport events staged all over the UK and, whether a 12-car rally organised by a local motor club or an international race meeting at Silverstone, they all need volunteers.”