Mat Jackson has won the third of today’s three HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship races at the Silverstone circuit in Northamptonshire.
After fighting his way through from seventh on the grid, Jackson fended off a fast-closing Robert Collard for his second win of the day following his victory in race one. Collard had been drawn to start from pole position on race three’s reversed grid and led the early stages until, in a mirror image of race one, was caught and passed by Jackson into the Brooklands corner.
But unlike in race one, Collard this time fought back and at the line was just 0.213s behind Jackson whose win ensured he came away with podium results in all three races after he’d also finished third in race two.
That’s now six podiums in a row for Warwickshire driver Jackson as he finished in the top three in every race at Knockhill two weeks ago as well. His win also meant victory in all three races today for the Racing Silverline Chevrolet team.
Colin Turkington was third and, heading to the series’ penultimate round – also in Northants at the Rockingham circuit on 20 September – leads the championship by 11 points from nearest challenger Fabrizio Giovanardi.
Italian Giovanardi, the reigning champion, finished the race in fifth in his VX Racing Vauxhall Vectra after Turkington’s Team RAC team-mate Stephen Jelley had muscled past him for fourth.
Sixth was Collard’s Airwaves BMW team-mate Jonathan Adam and seventh and eighth the Racing Silverline and RML Chevrolets of race two winner Jason Plato and James Nash. Paul O’Neill was again in the points, ninth in his sunshine.co.uk Honda Integra, with David Pinkney completing the top ten in his Team Dynamics Honda Civic.
There were problems for a number of notable names. Former F1 star Johnny Herbert had run as high as fourth in his Dynamics Honda but retired after being knocked off the track by former champion Plato who later received two penalty points on his competition licence and official reprimand for the incident.
At least Herbert got slightly further than Tom Chilton who, looking to build on his fine fifth from race two, this time was out after two laps with damage to his Team Aon Ford Focus after it had been clattered into by Andrew Jordan’s spinning VXR Vectra.
Jordan was able to continue to finish 15th, although it was difficult to differentiate between his and other VXR driver Matt Neal’s car, in 13th, as both crossed the line with crumpled front ends.
