Motorbase Performance had an excellent weekend in the latest round of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship.

Having netted their maiden BTCC pole position in qualifying with Mat Jackson on Saturday afternoon and 14^th place with James Cole, the weekend started full of promise.

Jackson got away in race one and pulled away from Gordon Sheddon and managed the lead at the front with the ballast free Ford Focus. As the race entered the final stages, Jackson found himself pulling away with a three second lead.

As the chequered flag fell it represented a fantastic result for the Wrotham based team, who missed the start of the season. Weekend by weekend since their return, they have improved to the point of a 22^nd career win for Jackson and a welcome lights to flag victory.

Teammate James Cole, also had an excellent opening race and brought the second Mountune powered Focus home in 12^th place, for an excellent points finish.

The laptime in race one saw Jackson starting on the second row in race two of the weekend from third place on the grid.

With 75kg of success ballast on board it was always going to be a tough challenge for Jackson to be challenging for the race win, but nonetheless that it is where he was.

He brought his Focus home in second place, keeping the guys in third and fourth behind him. James Cole finished just outside the points positions with a 17^th place finish.

The final race of the weekend didn’t quite go as the first two races of the weekend for Mat Jackson and Motorbase but with a 14^th place finish. James Cole was just one place behind him and taking the final points place finish of the weekend.

It represents another excellent weekend for the Kent based team and they head into Silverstone for the penultimate round of the championship full of confidence.

Giving his thoughts after the weekend a delighted, Jackson said: “Saturday’s qualifying went really well which put us in a great place for race 1 and it all went to plan. We led from lights to flag and managed to be in a position where we could control the gap to the Honda behind and it was a mega result for the team. There was definitely a little bit of luck involved when we picked up a puncture on the last lap but thankfully we managed to get through the race without the tyre letting go.

“Race two was the first time we’ve run with full ballast. I wanted to get P2 and managed to stay there for the whole of the race which showed us that we’ve managed to get the car into the window where we need it to be with the ballast on-board. We started off well in race 3 but then the soft tyre just dropped off a cliff so we have a bit of work to do to understand why, but a great weekend for the whole team and Silverstone should be very interesting!”

Pictures supplied by PSP Images.