Jackson Wins Final Race Of The Day
Mat Jackson took a commanding victory in the final race of the day at Oulton Park.
Starting from pole position, courtesy of the reverse grid system, Jackson made a decent start but was overtaken on the run down to the first corner by the fast starting Nick Foster in the WSR BMW. However, Jackson was back ahead before the end of the first lap, overtaking Foster at the Island Hairpin. From that point he never looked back as he strolled to his second victory of the season.
There was drama on the opening lap as Paul O’Neill crashed on the run to Druids. At the same point Rob Collard tangled with James Nash, spinning the latter to the back of the field. This brought out the safety car.
When the race restarted Jackson was able to maintain a reasonably comfortable gap to second placed Gordon Shedden, who had managed to get past Foster before the safety car was deployed.
Andy Jordan was elevated to third when Alex MacDowall had an off track excursion caused by a mechanical failure. He was forced to defend his position bravely in the last few laps from a charging Matt Neal who came from 19th on the grid to finish fourth.
Shortly after MacDowall’s problems, team mate Jason Plato suffered some of his own, tagging Collard whilst trying an optimistic overtaking manoeuvre for fifth. Both continued the race but finished without points, Plato limping home in 11th and Collard 14th.
Behind Neal, Tom Boardman was an excellent fifth, which went some way to making amends for the bad luck he suffered in the opening race of the day when he was collected by Jeff Smith’s spinning Vauxhall.
Sixth and seventh were the two Team AON Ford Focuses of Andy Neate and Tom Chilton.
Dave Newsham finished eighth, his first point scoring finish for Special Tuning Racing, with Nick Foster and Jeff Smith rounding out the top ten.
After the weekend’s racing Neal still leads the championship but now by a much reduced margin of two points over team mate Shedden.
Thomas Surgay
