Jackson: We couldn't do anymore

Mat Jackson was able to take solace from winning the final British Touring Car Championship race of 2016 after technical issues in qualifying derailed his chance of the title at Brands Hatch.

The Motorbase Performance driver embarked on the finale with a reasonable chance of vying for his maiden BTCC title, 21 points back from the championship summit.

However, a differential failure suffered early in qualifying meant Jackson, instead of taking points away from his rivals, was faced with the task of clawing himself back up the grid.

Jackson succeeded in rescuing his weekend by taking a commanding fifth win of the year in race three, but by that time his title was bid over after falling out of contention.

Nevertheless, the Ford Focus ST driver still recovered to finish third overall in the points standings behind Gordon Shedden and Sam Tordoff.

"We couldn't do anymore. We won the final race and that's all we could do. You can look back at the season and look at all the ones that got away but everyone could say the same," Jackson told Crash.net.

"It's moved us to third in the overall standings so that's good. But the main championship is what we're here for and we just missed it so it's unfortunate.

"It's been a good weekend from what was a poor qualifying session for us which really put us on the back foot. We managed to comeback and salvage something from so overall I'm pretty happy."

As virtue of Jackson's and Andrew Jordan's efforts, Motorbase Performance tasted their first BTCC title success after being officially crowned Independents' champions at the season finale.

Jackson says the ever burgeoning Motorbase operation has allowed the Ford outfit to punch above its weight against the might of the manufacturer backed teams.

Behind only the Honda Civic Type-R, the Motorbase prepared Ford Focus ST was the second most successful machine on the grid, having guided Jackson and Jordan to seven BTCC victories.

"There's a lot of potential still left in this Ford. The Honda is clearly a very quick car and there not going to sit back and relax, they'll keep pushing. We need to push more to get more," Jackson continued.

"It's all about the fine detail. And when you get the fine detail, you need to get fine, finer bit of detail. I think as a team, we're moving closer towards the big teams.

"Honda and BMW are full blown manufacturer teams and we're not. We're putting up a good fight as an independent package.

"We've had a good run and could have probably had a few more but everyone can say the same. Really, the car has got the pace so to come out with equal highest amount of wins is great for the team and myself."