10/07/2006 - Mat Returns To A Favourite Circuit

Henley in Arden's Mat Jackson is less than a week away from resuming his bid to win this year's Blaupunkt SEAT Cupra Championship in rounds seven and eight of the series at the Croft circuit in North Yorkshire - a venue at which the 25-year-old has always shone. Mat will go into Croft's double header fixture on 15-16 July with a nine-point lead at the top of the championship after winning four of the season's opening six rounds. It's clearly a position that he hopes he can hold on to for the champion will ultimately walk away with the biggest cash prize in UK motor sport - a cheque for £100,000. But Mat knows that winning at Croft will be tough - this year's SEAT grid has attracted many top line teams and drivers and each of his four victories has been hard fought. "The Cupra Championship's not for shrinking violets," says Mat. "You've really got to be on top of your game every time out - the level of competition in SEATs really is that intense.

One small error means you can lose six or seven places and you know that each of those places is going to be very hard to make up because of the quality of the drivers out there. "Just look at the most recent rounds, at Thruxton. I won the first one and then was on pole position for the second, but the car's balance wasn't quite spot on for that race and we paid dearly for it. We've learnt from that so should be stronger at Croft and we'll need to be. Certainly, we're approaching that critical stage of the season when the drivers most likely to be fighting it out for the title start to make a break."

Croft holds happy memories for Mat - it was at the Darlington track that he achieved his first ever victory in saloon cars when he won a round of the Renault Clio Cup in 2000. In 2001, he was just a fraction of a second from victory in the British Touring Car Championship's Production class. Last year, he was the class of the field with a pole position and victory in the Cupras. "It's fast and furious - my kind of circuit," adds Mat who drives for his Whale Tankers-sponsored family run Jacksons Motorsport team. "There's really only one ideal line around Croft so you need to be able to attack it but also be very precise. The car's set-up has to be right to achieve that and when it comes together it's massively rewarding." Mat's Croft timetable: Friday 14 July: Official Testing Saturday 15 July: 10.50-11.10 Qualifying (Race 1) & 15.00-15.20 Qualifying (Race 2) Sunday 16 July: 12.40 Race 1 (12 laps) & 17.25 Race 2 (16 laps)