Photo: PSP Images

Engine problems spoil Mat Jackson’s weekend

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Mat Jackson followed up on what was a tough weekend at Oulton Park with an even worse one at Croft, with an engine problem in race one dropping him to eighth, forcing him to skip race two and to rescue 12th from the back of the grid in race three.

Jackson started from eighth on the grid for the first race of the day in his Motorbase Performance Ford Focus ST, and although he climbed up to fifth place during the race, a problem with the engine saw him lose pace late in the race and drop back down the order.

“We got 10 laps in then the engine started shutting down, and that’s why we dropped back from fifth,” said Jackson to TouringCarTimes.

“Obviously getting it changed is a big job. We were working towards making race two, we always knew it was going to be tight.”

Jackson was also caught up in an incident with West Surrey Racing’s Tom Onslow-Cole, locking up and spinning Onslow-Cole around at Tower, for which Jackson apologised to Onslow-Cole for after the race.

“We were running a different brake pad, I got brake fade and couldn’t stop and made contact. I did give him the place back when he caught us up later in the race. Hands up it was my fault.”

Unable to take part in the second race, Jackson was forced to start from 23rd place in the last race of the day, which was broken up with a five lap safety car period after team-mate Liam Griffin’s crash.

“In race three coming from the back, people know they’ve got seven weeks to rebuild the car, there’s no respect out there and you’ve just got to stay out of carnage. That’s the biggest problem in race three when starting from the back.”

After a second consecutive tough weekend, Jackson’s dropped further back in the overall standings, though is still in sixth place, 82 points down on Matt Neal.

Jackson has also gone from leading the independents’ trophy after Thruxton, to being 43 points down on Eurotech Racing’s Andrew Jordan, though there are still 15 races to go in the season and another 300 points available in the independents’ trophy and 335 in the overall drivers’ championship.