Jason Plato has admitted that, with just nine rounds to go, beating Matt Neal to this year’s Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship title is going to take “a miracle”, although the SEAT driver refuses to give up while he has a mathematical chance.
Plato, the 2001 champion, is 40 points behind Neal and will seek to take another chunk out of the gap at the Knockhill circuit in Scotland this coming Sunday (3 September).
At Snetterton two weeks ago Plato won twice in his SEAT Leon to pull 14 points on Neal whose Team Halfords Honda still kept going after four collisions to earn him valuable points. Neal himself then added a victory in the day’s third race.
Plato said: “Even if we have three fab weekends in a row, at Knockhill, Brands Hatch and Silverstone, it’s still going to need Matt to have a lot of bad luck.
“His Honda is a tank – it has the ability to be T-boned and drive into the side of you at 70mph and get away with it. I don’t wish bad luck on anybody, but that’s what it’s going to be. It would need a miracle and you can’t manufacture those.
“At the moment I’m not really thinking of the Drivers’ title – winning the Manufacturers’ championship for SEAT is the number one priority.”
Plato, though, believes the tight, twisty Knockhill circuit could work to the advantage of his SEAT’s renowned handling capabilities.
He added: ”The end of the lap we can forget – a tight hairpin and then a long hill. We’ll lose out up there.
“The trick has got to be to get the car working as well as possible around the rest of the lap and if we can really maximise it then that might, over a complete lap, give us an edge.
“Unless we qualify on the front row it’s going to be very hard to get in a position to overtake. But if we really make the car perform as well as we know it can be then we might just be in with a shout…”
Admission to Knockhill's BTCC race day is FREE for children aged eight and under, while information on tickets for adults is available by calling the circuit on 01383 723337.
In addition to the BTCC's three rounds on Sunday, there will be another eight races put on by a variety of supporting championships from BMW, Porsche, SEAT, Formula Ford and Caterham.
