Mat Jackson was fastest in the mid-season Dunlop tyre test at Snetterton ahead of Motorbase Performance’s return to the BTCC and the former race winner was delighted.

“It felt brilliant to be back behind the wheel and back amongst our competitors. It’s obviously fantastic to end the day top of the time sheets and that’s always the aim, but the most important thing is to come back next month knowing that we have a great race car,” said Jackson.

The team has confirmed a return to the second half of the 2015 BTCC season and will field two further developed Ford Focus STs.

“It was a really important test for us today. We’ve done some testing but we’ve not been directly up against any other BTCC competitors until today. We knew we had a good car but we really weren’t sure how much everyone else had moved on. The work that the team and mountune have done over the winter is paying off and we now head to our first race meeting of the year full of confidence,” said Team Manager Oly Collins.

James Cole will drive the second Focus of the team and was 17th fastest with 69 laps completed during the test.

“It’s great to be back. We had a structured approach to the day and went through a lot of changes on the car. As is usual in testing, some worked and some didn’t. I did some race run simulations which will be valuable when we return here next month and will help both Mat and myself. Mat worked more on the one lap simulation and found a breakthrough towards the end of the day; unfortunately it was too late for me to try but we have the data now and we head to Snetterton in high spirits,” said Cole.

The team will make its return in the BTCC rounds at Snetterton on August 8-9th.