Jason Plato was pleased to claim his first podium of the season in the British Touring Car Championship at Croft, but the Subaru star admits that the team have a lot more work to do to make up for their engine deficit.
Having qualified in second behind team-mate Ash Sutton, Plato went on to claim his first points of the season in race one when he followed Sutton across the line in a Subaru 1-2.
An error on Plato’s part in race two, when he made a false start, cost him a chance of a repeat result, but he fought through the field to finish in 14th after serving a drive-through penalty.
Plato then ended his weekend with 19th in race three after struggling to pass cars ahead of him on the road, claiming that engine woes prevent him from being in a position to be able to overtake his competitors.
“Do you know what, I’m pleased, as Ash had a super day,” said Plato to TouringCars.Net. “I would have had a super day too had I not f***ed the start up in race two, which was my mistake.
“I was just a bit eager, which is probably psychological, because I’ve had such a s*** time and I could smell a victory, and I was a bit fired up. I just got the timing slightly wrong, so there’s a lesson to be learned there, but it was all down to me, 100%.
“I would have had a win or a second in race two, and then that would have been either two seconds or a second and a win, and that’s not a bad weekend.”
Despite showing strong pace in the first two races, Plato left Croft once again frustrated by external factors, as he slipped backwards in the pack.
“Race three just compounds the frustration – we are shit in a straight line. You don’t have to be a bloke with X-ray eyes – a f***ing mole or Stevie Wonder can see that we are s***. And not just a little bit off, but it’s f***ing dire.
“We can’t race – when we’re in the pack we go backwards. I can’t even overtake cars which are in dire tyre problems. I watched the BMW behind me breeze past me before the start line.
“It’s five car lengths but come the end of the lap we’ve closed it again, so it’s not just five car lengths, it’s 15 car lengths a lap, and we close it back up by the time we get to the last corner. It’s five car lengths every straight.
“It doesn’t matter what you do in the car, you cannot make that up and you can’t overtake. If there’s three or four of you, you daren’t get too close to the car in front because he’ll slow you up and then you lose a place, so you’re trying to stay away from everyone and you’re not racing.”
Plato believes that Team BMR are being hurt by having developed a car with a different engine configuration to the rest of the field.
“The problem is, we’ve done a super job on the car. If we had the same engine, we’d be gone! That’s the problem. Because there would be 30 people up and down this pitlane going f***ing ballistic so what’s better to have? Two people getting upset, or 30?
“For me, they [TOCA] should have said ‘no, the car is not allowed in the championship’ but they didn’t. That said, I’m not pointing fingers, I understand the problem.
“We have some serious issues here with the engine installation and the cooling package, which we’ve got to improve, and we’ve got to do a better job.
“But even if we do a better job we’re still going to be a lot down on power, so it’s not just the donkey, it’s not just the engine, it’s everything.
“We’ve got to work our b******s off. We’ve got to work so hard – we’re giving away performance because we’re running too hot, and until we get that sorted we can’t really point any fingers.
“We’ve got a lot of improvements to make internally, to make sure that we’re maxing everything out. There’s some improvements we made on the package and the engine installation.
“But if we get our side totally working 100% we’ll still not have enough pace.”