Mat Jackson’s stunning BTCC baptism continued apace at Rockingham last weekend, with a second podium finish in as many outings leaving him just six points adrift of reigning champion Matt Neal in the points standings. That, he assures, was only the start…
Following on from
Brands Hatch, the second round of the 2007 BTCC season took place at Rockingham last weekend. I’ve worked at Rockingham as a circuit instructor for four years, so going into the meeting I felt pretty confident we could be right up there and challenging for good results.
What’s more, we’ve got a good car and we were quick when we tested there on the media day. We knew we could run at the front and do the job.
In the second free practice session we were second-fastest, but then we struggled like mad in qualifying. We had made a slight set-up change, but it didn’t favour the car and I couldn’t quite hook the laps up. We put two new sets of tyres on, but we weren’t able to use them to our advantage. It was certainly frustrating to have to start so far down.
We tried a few different things for race one and I was running up in fifth place before being wiped out by another
BMW, which was a shame. You don’t expect it, but these things happen.
Races two and three went more to plan, though the earlier accident left us back in tenth position on the grid for the second race, which was annoying as it meant we had to do all the work again and come back through the pack. We struggled off the start when I got my nose cut off by Matt Allison, but we managed to get back up to fourth place in the end, and being able to hold
Jason Plato off for most of the race was nice too. Then in race three I finished second; it was good to mix it with the two SEATs and manufacturer entries again.
