Race update
The Airwaves Racing Fords make up ground on their rivals in the BTCC at Oulton Park...
We catch up with the Team Airwaves crew.
T he weekend started with a very wet qualifying session on Saturday, interrupting results and throwing up a very unusual-looking grid for Race 1 on Sunday. Both Airwaves drivers were affected by the weather, but Jackson managed to secure a P7 start, while Giovanardi’s flying lap was halted by another red flag, so he started Sunday’s first race in P12.
The conditions for raceday were much improved, with the picturesque Oulton Park looking beautiful in the blazing sunshine. Race 1 was unusually quite and uneventful; Jackson held his seventh place until the finish, while Giovanardi made up one place to claim a P11 finish.
Race 2 marked a special occasion for the Motorbase team that run the Airwaves Racing cars – their 250th appearance in the BTCC! The race itself looked to follow a similar script to Race 1, and it looked like most of the runners would finish in the same position as they started. Apart from Fabrizio’s Focus that is – which was taken out by an over zealous lunge from Alain Menu! Gio did rejoin the race, but with a damaged car, finished well outside of the point-scoring places. Jackson did fare a little better however, and after following Sam Tordoff’s MG for most of the race, he pulled off a great move to take the P6 finish as they headed across the line.
The third and final race always provides excitement, and as the heavens opened just prior to scheduled start time this weekend would be no different. The reverse grid saw Mat Jackson drawn to start in P3, and one of his trademark lightning starts saw the Airwaves Focus up into second place and challenging for the lead, but a safety car soon bunched the pack up again. At the restart Mat once again pushed hard to fight for the lead; perhaps a little too hard for the conditions, as an uncharacteristic error saw the Focus in a huge sideways slide. He did recover, but rejoined the race in P14.
Fabrizio had a fantastic final race of the day, showing his class in the difficult conditions. He made up 12 places by lap seven to secure P9. Teammate Jackson followed him through after recovering from his earlier incident, and the Airwaves pair traded places to finish P9 and P10.
The third Motorbase-run and Fast Ford-sponsored Focus on the grid, Jack Clarke’s Crabbies car had another weekend where the car showed promise in qualifying, but unfortunately weren’t able to deliver the goods on race day. Jack’s best finish of the weekend was P18 in the final race.
Next up the BTCC heads to Croft, and the recent results move the Airwaves team to third in the Independent Teams Standings, meaning the team are confident for success.