Race Update
The Airwaves Racing team earn some very hard-fought points at Croft...
We catch up with the Team Airwaves crew.
A fter a fairly uneventful series of races at Oulton Park last time out, the BTCC was back to its door-to-door, bumper-tobumper best at Croft recently. And the Airwaves Racing Focuses were right in the thick of the action, battling hard to secure four top-ten finishes – including a podium spot – and a fistful of valuable Championship points.
Qualifying was disappointing for the Airwaves cars and drivers Mat Jackson and Fabrizio Giovanardi started Sunday’s first race in P15 and P18 respectively. But when the flag dropped both cars were able to show their pace and sprinted through the field making up places; Jackson was in P9 by the end of the first lap! The pair put in solid drives and finished P8 (Jackson) and P12 (Giovanardi).
Race two followed a similar path as the Airwaves Fords picked their way through an incident-filled race to advanced their way up the standings, eventually earning the team a brace of top ten finishes. Jackson came home P&, closely followed by Gio in P10.
Those results would later become P6 and P9 when Matt Neal’s Honda failed the post-race checks. This was bittersweet for Gio, who was drawn (by himself no less!) to be on pole position for the third and final race of the day. The re-shuffled order saw Gio start Race three in P2 with Mat just behind in P5.
Race three was, in typical BTCC fashion, the most physical of the day. The action kicked off right from the first corner with cars immediately getting tangled with each other, but Fabrizio was able to avoid any drama and headed off, with teammate Jackson coming through just behind in third. Gio’s lead was short lived however, when a desperately late (and heavy) lunge from current Champ Andrew Jordan sent his Focus into a huge slide at over 120mph! He managed to avoid having a massive accident and rejoined the pack, but down in 18th and with substantial damage, which ultimately lead to the squad’s first DNF of the season.
Jackson, meanwhile, was busy fighting off challenges from both Rob Collard’s BMW and then Gordon Shedden’s Honda. Mat kept his head and brought the car across the line in P4 – which was later promoted to P3 after Shedden was given a time penalty for his contact with the Airwaves Focus.
The BTCC now takes a summer break but will be back out at Snetterton very soon, and the Airwaves Racing crew are confident of a strong second half to the season, and we’ll be there to follow every minute of it!