Mat Jackson has tasted the highs and lows of late in his maiden BTCC campaign, scoring his debut series victory in only his 15th start at Oulton Park before being engulfed by both exhaust fumes and the chasing pack at Brands Hatch last weekend. Here the regular Crash.net columnist tells us the story of his rollercoaster ride…
Following round three at
Thruxton where we had taken the front left corner off the car in an accident, there were a lot of parts sent back off to Germany. We had to get some new dampers and so forth, and after that there wasn’t much time left before we went to
Croft. We had to change the engine too, so all-in-all it was a difficult couple of weeks.
Obviously we’d had a good start to the season with a couple of good podiums in the first two rounds at Brands Hatch and Rockingham, so we were definitely fired-up heading to Croft and we came away from there with two top four finishes including another podium.
We had some new development parts from the Netherlands that we ran on the car at
Oulton Park, which made a huge difference compared to where we had been up until then. To be honest we’d only got the dampers about two days beforehand so it was going to be a bit of a trial-and-error weekend, but they worked straight out of the box.
That really was the turning point – from there things have been a bit easier. In qualifying we’ve been able to get nearer to the leading Team RAC
BMW of
Colin Turkington, so it’s looking good for the rest of the season. In free practice one at Oulton we were second-quickest, then in free practice two I stuck it in the barriers on the exit of Deer Leap, but overall it looked very promising from the word go.
