Mat Jackson fastest at Snetterton tyre test on BTCC return
Motorbase Performance’s Mat Jackson signalled his intent on his and his team’s return to the BTCC by topping the times in the mid-season Dunlop tyre test at Snetterton.
Jackson’s best effort of 1.57.216, set on his penultimate lap of the day, put him 0.152 second clear of Team BMR’s Colin Turkington, who had led proceedings since the morning running.
Triple Eight Racing’s Andrew Jordan completed a mammoth 120 laps across the day to finish third ahead of Turkington’s team-mate Jason Plato, while West Surrey Racing’s Andy Priaulx rounded out the top five.
The third Team BMR car of Aron Smith was sixth ahead of Speedworks Motorsport’s Tom Ingram, with championship leader Gordon Shedden, his Honda team-mate Matt Neal and WSR’s Sam Tordoff completing the top 10.
Jackson completed 66 laps over the day in his Focus ST and although testing times are notoriously difficult to read anything into, his best lap was 0.530 faster than his best qualifying time from the Snetterton meeting last season.
Of the other returnees, Jackson’s team-mate James Cole was 17th after racking up 69 laps in the sister Focus, with Handy Motorsport’s Robb Holland 22nd as he prepares to sit in for Simon Belcher for the next three rounds. Belcher took part in the morning running, completing 14 laps and ending up 1.118 seconds off Holland’s best time.
Elswhere, AmD Tuning’s Nicolas Hamilton continued his BTCC education with an impressive 19th best time of the 24 runners, just over 2.7 seconds off the ultimate pace set by Jackson.
Tony Gilham Racing finally managed to clock up some trouble-free laps in their Toyota Avensis, with regular driver Kieran Gallagher completing 39 tours in the morning, and team boss Gilham running three laps in the morning and 36 in the afternoon.
Aside from valuable running for the teams, the test gave Dunlop the opportunity to evaluate its soft tyre options for next season. A harder compound, earmarked as a possible replacement for the current tyre, was run by Andrew Jordan, Colin Turkington, Matt Neal and Andy Priaulx over the course of the day.
Dunlop is also looking at an alternative to choosing a new soft tyre for 2016, and was evaluating the hard compound used at Thruxton as a full season option. This tyre was run by Power Maxed Racing’s Josh Cook.
A total of 24 drivers took part in the test, with Jack Goff, Rob Austin and Dave Newsham all sitting the day out while their team mates racked up the laps. Ciceley Motorsport, Welch Motorsport and Support Our Paras Racing did not take part at all.
The times shown below are the combined classification for the whole day’s running.
