■Silverline Chevrolet driver returns to top of drivers’ championship■Pole for MacDowall puts him in the record books
With a new livery showing off the manufacturer’s market-leading 5-Year Promise aftercare package, the Silverline Chevrolet team enjoyed back-to-back victories in the Snetterton summer sunshine.
Jason Plato took outright victory in Rounds 16 and 17 of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship, with two very clean races enabling him to open up a 20-point championship lead ahead of Honda’s Matt Neal.
After locking out the front row of the grid thanks to an exciting qualifying session in Saturday’s showers, Alex MacDowall sealed his place in the record books as the youngest driver ever to achieve pole position in a BTCC race.
But a snapped gear lever led to a premature retirement from MacDowall before the first bend, leaving Plato clear to chase the win. Fending off a challenge from Mat Jackson’s BMW, the Chevrolet Cruze’s superior performance and handling gave Plato the edge, as he also picked up a point for fastest lap.
But one victory wasn’t enough for Chevrolet’s title contender, as he repeated the feat in race two, showing a clean pair of heels to the Ford Focus drivers Chris Chilton and Tom Onslow-Cole in a textbook display of racecraft.
Leading from the start of the race, Plato opened up a healthy lead before an incident involving Tom Boardman’s SEAT and Paul O’Neill’s Honda led to the safety car being deployed. Luckily, the regrouping of the pack was of no disadvantage to Plato, who went on to finish almost five seconds ahead of Chilton’s second-place Ford, with another fastest lap to further boost his points balance.
“I was absolutely thrilled by the performance of the car,” said Plato. “During the summer break, the RML team engineers have worked really hard to drill down into the specifics of the way the car performs and handles. In race one, we had a little bit of understeer that meant we felt a bit of pressure from the BMW, but in the second race we got the car absolutely spot-on.
“It’s great that we now have a car we can really attack with, the Cruze is now a phenomenal car, and that makes me very excited as we head into the closing part of the season.”
Unfortunately despite stunning the crowds in qualifying, Alex MacDowall had a further stroke of bad luck, after being forced up onto the kerb on Lap 11, damaging the sump of his car and forcing him to retire.
The BTCC’s reverse grid system left Plato 9th on the grid for the final of the day’s three races, with MacDowall forced to start 16th on the grid after retiring from Race 2.
Another solid drive from Plato saw him claw back two positions, while a fifth lap incident involving Mat Jackson’s BMW and Tom Onslow-Cole’s Ford saw him move up to fifth overall, fighting off a race-long challenge from Stephen Kane’s BMW. MacDowall finished 14t
Manufacturers/Constructors Standings after Round 18
Team Dynamics/Honda 321Arena/Ford 313Silverline Chevrolet/RML 273
Driver Standings after Round 18
Jason Plato 151Matt Neal 131Gordon Shedden 127Tom Onslow-Cole 113Stephen Kane 109Mat Jackson 101
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