Mat Jackson feels that he and Airwaves Racing are in good shape for tomorrow’s trio of British Touring Car Championship races at Thruxton, starting fourth on the grid in the improving Ford Focus.
Jackson finished fourth in the final race at Donington Park last time out, a position he achieved in qualifying for tomorrow’s first race at Thruxton following a strong performance in the 30-minute Saturday session.
Speaking to The Checkered Flag afterwards, Jackson said: “I think we’re in good shape, and we can move forward from where we start.
“Obviously to fight at the front then you need a car that’s capable of doing that, and the Airwaves Focus today has proved that we’re now capable of challenging them.
“Of course the car has been a massive improvement on what we had this time last year. We haven’t really had the results so far this year, but if you look at the start of the season we were running sixth at Brands and got wiped out, Donington we were P4 and now we’re P4 again in qualifying.
“The season hasn’t been there at the start, but we’re getting the momentum now.”
Formerly a winner around Thruxton three times, Jackson feels confident that the Motorbase Ford can remain in the hunt for the podium positions in tomorrow’s action.
On the prospects of challenging for the major podium places, Jackson added: “That’s the plan. We’ve got no ballast in the car and obviously Thruxton is notoriously hard on tyres, so the ballast just makes it worse.
“The guys around us are pretty quick and have very good cars, so we’ll have to wait and see. The race is always very difficult. You would say ‘keep off the kerbs’, but then if the first guy does it then everybody else does it too.”