Jason Plato was relieved to have taken pole position in qualifying for the British Touring Car Championship at Knockhill in a session which the double champion described as ‘stressful’ due to traffic.
Plato took his 48th career pole position in qualifying for his 500th BTCC race, having struggled to find a clear piece of track in a session which was twice interrupted by red flags.
“I’m a bit relieved to be honest; we had pace but we just couldn’t get a lap,” said Plato to TouringCars.Net. “We lost a lap with the red flag, which I was on with best sectors, and then obviously you lose out and stress comes in.
“It was almost a relief, because had I not got pole I would have been disappointed. I knew we had the car to do it.
“The stress started to come in when I hadn’t got a lap in and done the lap I wanted, because I just couldn’t get a clear lap. So on that last lap I was just relieved to have got some space and no-one popped out of the pits and got in the way.”
Having claimed his first pole in a rear-wheel drive car, and his first with Subaru, Plato believes that whilst a win in race one is possible, repeating that feat in race two will be much harder. In particular Plato cites the BMWs, and Sam Tordoff, as his biggest threat on Sunday.
“I think in race one we can have a win; if everything goes well we’ve got a very good chance,” continued the 48-year-old. “In race two with that amount of weight on it’s doubtful because Tordoff has done almost the same time as me with 66 kg on.
“The only way you can counteract weight is with power, and we don’t have it, so when we put the weight on we’ll lose quite a bit of pace. He’ll be fast in race two and we’ll lose quite a bit of lap time, so will he be able to drive past me in a straight line? Possibly so.
“We’re nowhere on the straights and we should be on pole by a mile with no weight, and yet we’re less than half a tenth up on the BMW that’s got 66 kg on it. We know that if you put 66 kg in my car it’s worth seven tenths of a second.
“We need more power, but we can’t make that, we need to be given it by the organisers and at the minute they don’t want to.”