Henley-in-Arden's Mat Jackson made it four wins in a row with another pair of victories at the Snetterton circuit in Norfolk yesterday to further extend his Blaupunkt SEAT Cupra Championship lead and edge closer still to the Champion's prize of £100,000. His weekend was made all the sweeter as he achieved his double victory with probably the season's most spectacular overtaking manoeuvre. Whale Tankers-sponsored Mat took the maximum points haul possible from the weekend with two wins, two fastest laps and a bonus point for gaining the most number of places in race two. He has now won nine of the season's 12 rounds - breaking his own record of eight wins from last year - and is 47 points ahead of nearest challenger Alan Blencowe. Mat has also praised Blencowe for withdrawing an appeal against him that threatened to jeopardise his weekend. After race one, Blencowe's team protested Mat's car for not having all its lights illuminated.
The protest was unsuccessful, although Mat received two penalty points on his competition licence. However, Blencowe's team appealed to the stewards to increase the penalty, but Blencowe later took the decision to withdraw the appeal. "Trying to get me thrown out over such a trivial matter - I may have caught the light switch during a gear change and not noticed - was the worse thing they could have done," says 25-year-old Mat. "The matter hadn't been resolved as we went out for race two and I was so fired up. We had made an incorrect tyre choice in qualifying and I was back in eighth on the grid but I was not going to be beaten." At the first corner, Mat's Jacksons Motorsport SEAT drove around four cars to move up to fourth position. By mid-distance he was up to second and on the penultimate lap, braking heavily from 130mph, passed Blencowe for the lead with a sensational move on the outside line into the Esses. Mat adds: "That was such a sweet moment and there was a lot of cheering from inside the car when I crossed the line.
After the podium celebrations, we had to resume the appeal and Alan obviously saw sense and withdrew it. He said he didn't want his first win to be on a piece of paper. His team's actions were ridiculous, but full credit to Alan for seeing the light - no pun intended!" While race two was held on a dry track, race one had got under way on a wet circuit. Mat briefly lost his pole position advantage to Fulvio Mussi as they pulled away from the start but at the first corner he again drove on the outside line to re-take a lead that he would never relinquish. Mat says: "The SEAT Cupra generates so much grip in these wet conditions it is a joy to drive. It's been a tremendous weekend for the whole team - to come away with the maximum score possible is such a great achievement. My points lead has increased and with six races to go it's looking very positive. But it's not over yet and I'm not going to fall into a trap of believing it's in the bag. There's still a lot of hard racing to be done and I intend adding to my victory tally."
