In his latest exclusive column for Crash.net, British Touring Car Championship runner-up Mat Jackson takes us on a rollercoaster ride over the second half of his 2008 season in the leading tin-top series – and explains how it felt to nick second place in the title chase right at the close…

Snetterton was a difficult weekend. Qualifying didn't really go our way; we struggled pretty much all year with getting a decent qualifying lap out of the car, and Snetterton was no different. At certain times we hit it right, but if you look at our results it hasn't been our strongest point, that's for sure.

That always makes race one very tough, and we got battered from pillar-to-post at Snetterton and finished down in 15th place. That meant we started race two well down again, but we at least came through the field and picked up a reasonable result. We then started off the front row in race three with Steven Kane alongside us, and again we didn't really have the pace so we knew it was going to be tough. We managed to just about drag the win out over the 17-lap race and come away with it.

Race one at Oulton Park was a bit annoying because we got pushed wide. Again we had a poor qualifying, so we struggled early on in the race when you've got cars all around you and it's not the best place to be. We got pushed wide at Knickerbrook chicane which lost us a lot of time, because the rules say that you have to come to a complete standstill and re-start. That put us a way down the field. To pull the results out in races two and three, though, was good for championship points, and it kept us in the hunt for the title.

Knockhill was always going to be tough, and we knew qualifying was going to be the key. It's very tight and almost like a kart racing circuit, so it's very difficult to overtake. To pull seventh out of qualifying was a reasonable result, and obviously being rear wheel-drive the BMW is a great car off the start-line, so we can always rely on making up a few places there.

I think all-in-all the Knockhill circuit didn't really favour the BMWs – it plays more to the front wheel-drive cars – so to pull the kind of results that we did out of the weekend made for a reasonably happy trip home. It was quite a strange one actually, because we wouldn't have said that Knockhill was going to suit us in the BMW, but to come away with three solid points-scoring finishes was a great boost.

Obviously qualifying 14th at Silverstone didn't leave me with many good thoughts, but equally we knew we'd got nothing to lose at that point and that the next day's racing was going to have to be very tough racing if we were going to maintain our push in both the independents' and main championship and stay focussed on the third place that we could see at that time. Luckily for us the heavens opened and the rain came down; that really saved us, to come from a pretty poor qualifying position to a pretty impressive race one result.

In certain ways the rain favours the BMW, but in other ways it doesn't. With a rear wheel-drive car, if you're on slicks and it starts raining and it goes slightly damp, it's always going to hurt you compared to the front wheel-drive stuff. That was the situation that we saw at both Donington Park and Brands Hatch. If, however, it goes full wet and all-of-a-sudden we can race on the wet tyres as happened at Silverstone, that does help us.

We had been working all day and chipping away to get a good set-up on the car, which is what we achieved, and I think we made good use of that at Silverstone to come away with some good results. We knew that the rain was going to be more of a strength for us, but even so to get second really was a great result, and something we probably wouldn't have bet on at the start; we had looked at it and said if we could get into the top five, then we'd be happy. With the slippery conditions and the rain, though, you never know what can happen. Obviously a lot of contact can occur and you can get through, but again, coming from 14th on the grid, it's a lot easier to find an accident waiting to happen and go and get yourself involved in that. It's always a very tricky situation to be in.