In his second exclusive column for Crash.net, Mat Jackson reflects on a stunning performance in the BTCC season-opener at Brands Hatch last weekend, one that yielded a rostrum finish which – had luck swung his way – could so easily have been a dream maiden victory...
I enjoyed my BTCC debut at
Brands Hatch. We should have had two podiums but unfortunately we didn’t get to keep the first one. We were able to show the car’s potential though, and hopefully it turned a few heads and made people realise we’ve got the pace, commitment and resources to go out there and do the job. It was a mega, a brilliant result.
Andy Priaulx kindly came along and gave me some advice over the weekend. The
BMW 320si I’m driving is Andy’s from last year, so he knows it extremely well. He was on the grid with me and I was shouting ‘how the hell do I start this thing?’ because I had never started a race in it before!
That obviously worked, because in the first race I got a brilliant start and went on to finish third. Of course, we were later disqualified, which was frustrating in one way. We did the hard work and got the result, but it was a driver error that caused the problem in the first place. I can see why the officials took the approach they did; I can understand it from both sides. It was just one of those things really. If I hadn’t put it in the wrong gear we wouldn’t have got into the situation we did and we would have kept the third place, but you live and learn don’t you?
