Motorsports: BTCC interview: Matt Neal's season

Our final interview with VX Racing Vauxhall Vectra driver Matt Neal looks back at the 2009 season.

Your Vauxhall Vectra was competitive, so it must have been a frustrating season for you to finish fifth in the points?

'It was a strange year for me. It was going really well until the mid point of the season and I simply couldn't help but finish on the podium. I was leading the points standings up until the end of May. Then, for some reason, things just started to go wrong.'

There were problems outside of my control with the car and with other drivers that drained a lot of points away from me. A football commentator would call it a game of two halves. Motorsport happens like that sometimes but every race where we were competitive something would come along and knock us off course. It was frustrating but I have been around long enough to know that you have lows with the highs.'

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Vauxhall announced at the start of the season that it was pulling out of the BTCC. Did that have any effect on your year?

'I don't think it did and it probably had the opposite effect of motivating everyone. The whole team knew they would be out of work at the end of the season and that meant they wanted to sign off their time with Vauxhall with a win so they would have that on their CVs. Triple Eight, which runs the cars, is hugely professional and it was important for them not to let things slide so they didn't.'

Halfway through the year, when your team-mate Fabrizio Giovanardi got ahead of you in the points, you were forced to play the team role weren't you?

'I still had my pride and I want to win every time I go out on to the circuit. If I could help Fabrizio by ceding a place then I would, but there were many times when he wasn't around and I was racing for myself. I was very conscious of my crew back in the garage and that I was representing them on the circuit. That gave me motivation to go for every place I could no matter what the circumstances. I didn't really want to let them down.'

At the final race of the season, you tried everything you could to help Giovanardi snatch the title from Colin Turkington's BMW. How did you feel about that?

'It was a shame because we could have smoked those races. My car was fantastic and I should easily have had two wins, but I am a big man and I realise that sometimes you have to look at a bigger picture. Gio needed some help and I was in the right place to be able to provide it so I did. It is a shame because I wanted to be the man that had handed Vauxhall its last win in the BTCC after its 20-year campaign but there were bigger things to think about at that meeting. It is just a shame we came up a fraction short in terms of the drivers' championship.'

If you had to sum up your season in one sentence, what would it be?

'That is was promising but my challenge was ruined by being the victim of circumstance.'

What's next for Matt Neal?

'I have tested for my dad's team, Team Dynamics, in its Honda Civic. It is very different from the Vectra: it has some strong points and some not so strong points that we need to work on. I am working hard to put a deal together and also working hard with the engineers to get the most out of the car should we be able to find the budget to return to the British Touring Car Championship next season. It is very much where I want to be.'

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