Mat Jackson lamented a frustrating final Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship qualifying session of the season at Brands Hatch GP, but insists that ‘anything could happen’ with three races to go.
The Motorbase Performance driver will start 19th on the grid in the first of Sunday’s final three races of the season at the Kent circuit, following a qualifying session interrupted by a red flag and subsequent downpour midway through the 30 minutes.
The 2008 runner-up sits 21 points adrift of championship leader, Sam Tordoff, later admitting to his frustration of a poor qualifying at a key point in the year.
“I’m frustrated, but it’s not over”, Jackson told The Checkered Flag after qualifying. “A lot can happen tomorrow and we’ve got to just see what we can do.
“It’s not ideal – we’d much rather be at the front. We’ve just got to look onwards and upwards.”
Asked whether a dry session would have given Motorbase a better chance, Jackson said: “I think we were in the mix. We didn’t have any problems in qualifying; in the dry I think we would have been in the top few rows.
“That’s the slightly frustrating thing. These things happen though and they’re here to test us, so sadly it wasn’t our day. We need to be up the road.”
Despite the setback, Jackson’s title rivals endured mixed qualifying results themselves. While series leader Tordoff starts 10th on the grid, the Motorbase man insists that the title is by no means over for Ford.
“Anything can happen. You just don’t know how it could spin round. We’re still there, we’re still fighting and we’ll see what happens tomorrow.”
“We’ve had a good year”, Jackson said of Motorbase’s 2016 season to date. “We’ve had a lot of issues that have taken us out of great races, but you can’t look back. We’ve came into the season with the reset button pressed, with new dampers and the RML kit. The team have got along with it pretty well.”
