Brands race 1: Plato all the way

Jason Plato has won the first of today’s (Sunday) three Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship rounds at the Brands Hatch circuit in Kent.

Plato, from Oxford, led all the way from pole position to record his seventh win of the season in his SEAT Leon – a result that moves him up to second in the championship.

Team Halfords Honda driver Matt Neal finished second and Colin Turkington, in Team RAC’s MG ZS, was third. Turkington’s result is the first-ever podium finish in the BTCC for a car powered by bio-ethanol fuel.

The result means that Neal leads the title race by 50 points from Plato while Turkington is third, a further five points behind.

Mathematically, Neal can now win the title in today’s third race.

Out of luck was Team Halfords’ Gordon Shedden who dropped from third to seventh on the final lap when his car picked up a punctured tyre. Vauxhall team-mates Tom Chilton and Fabrizio Giovanardi finished fourth and sixth, sandwiching Team RAC’s fifth-placed Robert Collard.

Misfortune also hit SEAT’s Darren Turner who retired with a mechanical problem while lying second early on and Team Halfords’ Gareth Howell who crashed out while on course for what would have been fifth position.

On his BTCC return, diabetic Paul O’Neill - ironically racing on the sugar beet-based fuel bio-ethanol - scored a point in tenth in his his Thurlby Motors with Tech-Speed Vauxhall Astra.

Vauxhall’s Gavin Smith and Kartworld Racing’s Jason Hughes were lap one retirements after their Astra and MG collided at the start causing a safety car period.

Source: www.btcc.net