Jason Plato believes that lifting the 2011 British Touring Car Championship at Silverstone will be a “tough challenge” – despite taking another two victories at Brands Hatch to bring his season tally to eight.
Entering the weekend the reigning champion was 24 points adrift of the leading Honda duo Gordon Shedden and Matt Neal – however that gap was reduced to just five points after Plato took points for two wins, a sixth, a pole position, leading two races and setting two fastest laps around the Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit. Plato’s cause was also helped by both Honda men suffering a puncture in the opening race.
After such a dominating performance, the Chevrolet man’s strongest of the year, Plato was full of praise for his Silverline Chevrolet team.
“We’ve got the car set-up just perfectly,” said Plato. “It was unbeatable out there today, thanks in no small part to the fine-tuning we did in free practice. It was amazing in qualifying, amazing during the races, and the performance really shows why the team at RML are the best in the business for preparing Touring Cars. Despite the challenges we’ve faced this year, the Cruze is the best Touring Car I’ve ever driven, and the hard work we’ve put into the set-up has really paid dividends.”
Despite his performances around the Kent circuit, Plato believes the championship could still be out of reach in 2011 due to the different, faster characteristics of the Silverstone circuit.
“Realistically, it’s going to be a tough challenge. The high speed nature of Silverstone will allow the turbo cars to run at full throttle, which will make things a little difficult for us, but if it rains then anything could happen.”
Plato’s younger team-mate Alex MacDowall looked to be on for another strong weekend after he took this third podium of the season in the opening race. However in race two his Chevrolet Cruze dramatically suffered a mechanical failure which was compounded in the third race when his gearbox gave up, leading to the Carlisle racer’s first double retirement of the season.
Commenting on the first race of the day, where he took third, MacDowall said: “This is a proper track, a really ballsy track, and if you’re a good driver you can excel through the fast corners, which is where we’ve been strong. We had second place done until I got a vibration from the front. I thought I was going to get a puncture so I had to think whether I wanted to let Jackson through or fight him and risk the tyre going. So I backed off and settled for third.”
A dramatic failure followed in the second race, where MacDowall was lucky to not tangle with anyone else as his engine expired on the Cooper straight.
“The car just blew,” said MacDowall. “I didn’t know what had happened but I knew it was terminal! It’s so frustrating to have a failure like that as we were on for another good finish.”
The final race saw MacDowall experience gearbox probles on the way to the grid, in which he was unable to select third gear. His problems only worsened during the race and he stopped after just five laps.
Heading to Silverstone in just under two weeks time, Plato still has a chance at the overall driver’s title whilst MacDowall will be aiming to finish the season as the second-best Chevrolet driver and pass Paul O’Neill in the championship, who is just seven points in front in 9th.