Airwaves Racing’s Mat Jackson emerged as the winner of the final race of the day at Donington Park after avoiding the carnage around him that took out several of his main competitors.
The chaos began almost immediately as Dave Newsham spun accross the pack on the start line after getting his BMW completely on the grass. As he attempted to recover the spin he clipped the Toyota Avensis of Tony Hughes, ending his race before it had really begun.
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On the same lap at the old hairpin, contact between James Nash, Tom Chilton and Tom Onslow-Cole sent the latter two into retirement with accident damage. There had previously been contact out of the first corner which stymied the efforts of Tony Gilham and Rob Collard, who had noticable front-end damage on his WSR BMW.
By the end of the opening lap pole sitter Alex MacDowall found himself with a good lead, although the resulting safety car soon reduced that. At the restart it was not long before Jackson made his move and went on to take his 13th career victory.
Andrew Jordan came through from ninth on the grid to finish in second – meaning that he leaves Donington Park with three podium finishes including a victory – by far his best ever weekend in the series to date.
Finishing in third was James Nash who, by taking his third podium of the weekend, moves to the top of the championship standings for the first time in his thus far short BTCC career. MacDowall was just behind Nash, unable to keep two of the hard-charging turbo Vectras behind but finishing with a comfortable margin over the other Vectra of Jeff Smith, who scored a career-best result in fifth.
One of the stories of the weekend came from the RML mechanics at the Silverline Chevrolet team. After Jason Plato’s big roll in the second race of the day they faced a race against time to get him onto the grid for the final race. However they achieved this feat and Plato was able to reward their hard work by bringing his somewhat battered Cruze home in sixth.
Matt Neal struggled home in seventh, clearly unhappy with something on his car and unable to put up a strong fight for position. The Honda driver had run third early on in the race, but was forced to drive especially defensive in the closing stages as faster cars caught up with him.
Paul O’Neill, finishing eighth, Liam Griffin in ninth and Nick Foster in tenth all scored points, the latter two enjoying their first-ever BTCC points finishes. However they only got into the points at the very end of the race after Andy Neate and Tony Gilham made contact on the run out of the old hairpin. Neate was pitched into the barriers heavily, whilst Gilham had to retire with broken rear suspension on his Vectra. Tom Boardman was running in fifth until his car failed and he stopped with one lap to go.
There was also a first-ever race finish for the Rob Austin Racing Audi A4, which took the final position down in 13th out of 13 finishers. Another full NGTC runner, Frank Wrathal, failed to complete enough laps to be classified as a finisher but showed promising pace in the new Toyota Avensis, with a best lap of 1:12.443, compared to a best lap of 1:11.491 for eventual race-winner Jackson.
Very glad to see Jackson win – but some of the driving standards today were disappointing.