When Jason Plato started to think about driving a Subaru in the British Touring Car Championship, this probably wasn’t the first season he had envisioned. It’s been a difficult year for Plato – and the entire team – but they seem to have finally gotten the hang of things and, going into the final stage of the championship, Plato is one of two Subaru drivers mathematically in with a shot at the title.
Jason Plato’s championship points this season
The season got off to a difficult start for Plato, who only took three points from the first weekend.
You know things didn’t go well when the team’s release for the weekend includes the phrase “lessons learned”. The entire BMR Team faced difficulties at Donington Park, the second weekend of the season. Plato managed to get away from the track relatively unscathed, an anonymous weekend compared to his less lucky team mates, but he still left without taking a single point from the track
Things only got worse at the next round, when BMR made the decision to sit out of the three races at Thruxton for safety reasons. Nearly a third of the races gone and Plato had only a single points scoring finish.
But race after race in touring cars we see that anything is possible and Team BMR proved that once again at Oulton Park.
Right from the beginning of the weekend, things were looking good for Plato. The BMR man had been running in second for a large part of qualifying, only to qualify sixth overall. For anybody who started following the championship at the start of the year, it might have been a shock to find Jason Plato the centre of race one’s action, a battle with Gordon Shedden ending with the Subaru man on the podium. Plato took two more third place finishes that day, his points total more than six times higher than when he’d entered the weekend.
From there, the season steadied out for Plato. He took two more podium finishes at the next weekend, before finally managing a win at Knockhill. That, though, has been the two time champion’s only win though.
A break down of Plato’s finishes this season
Fifty eight points behind the championship leader, and with five drivers ahead of him in the championship standings, it would take a lot of luck for Plato to take the title at Brands Hatch. With nearly seventy points on offer, it’s doable, but would require those ahead of him – including his own team mate – to face a disaster of a weekend.
But then, back in May, the idea that Plato would be in with a shot come Brands Hatch was laughable, so I wouldn’t rule him out just yet.
Image credit: Caroline Rhea
