Mat Jackson praised his Motorbase Performance squad after breaking his win duck of the 2014 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship season at Knockhill last weekend.
The 2008 BTCC runner-up made progress from seventh on the grid in Scotland by moving up to fourth in a chaotic opening race, before adding to three podium finishes in 2014 with a long-awaited victory in the second encounter in Fife.
The Motorbase Ford Focus driver moved up to second place on the opening lap of the race, before inheriting the lead when Matt Neal served a drive-through penalty for jumping the start after which he was unchallenged for a first BTCC win for himself and the Airwaves squad since Silverstone 2012.
“Finally!” Jackson told The Checkered Flag of his win. “The car has got the pace and we’re in good shape.
“We’ve got the win, now we need another one. But it’s nice that we’ve gone and done it and we haven’t just lucked in on a race that everybody takes the credit for.
“We genuinely have won the race and gone forward this weekend, so it’s a great result for everybody in the team to get the first of the year after we came so close at Snetterton.”
Jackson has finished every single race in the points during 2014 so far – 17 of the 21 races in the top 10 – and pointed towards consistency for the remainder of the season, starting with Rockingham at which he has previously reached the podium five times in a BTCC career that surpassed 250 races at Snetterton earlier this August.
“We need consistency now”, Jackson added on the trip to Rockingham. “We need to be in the points all the time. We’re still one of just a few to have scored points in every round as well which just shows how much effort there is going in as a team.
“Up to this point we’ve certainly done a good job of that.”
The final race for Jackson was blighted by an incident outside of his powers, suffering damage which hobbled his Ford Focus created by a shunt ahead of him as Jason Plato‘s Triple Eight MG cannoned into the rear of Rob Austin‘s Audi A4 at the hairpin.
Jackson commented: “It’s just a shame about the third race, but these sort of things happen. The reverse-grid didn’t help, but we ran into the back of Jason [Plato] when he went into the back of [Rob] Austin which put a hole through the inter cooler, then we just lost all straight-line speed.
“So obviously it has been a good weekend. Race three was the exception, which was a bit frustrating, but this is touring cars – anything can happen.”
The return to the top step of the podium for Jackson moves him closer to the top four in the championship, now just 10 points behind fifth-placed Andrew Jordan as the series heads to Rockingham on 6/7 September.
