Jason Plato is one of five drivers in with a shot of winning the 2011 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship going into the final round at Silverstone in a fortnight's time.
The Oxfordshire driver won the first two races of the penultimate meeting at Brands Hatch in Kent this weekend from pole position in his Silverline Chevrolet Cruze to move closer to the top of the standings. Honda Racing Team rivals Matt Neal and Gordon Shedden needed to make pit stops to have punctured tyres replaced on their Civics in the first race and could only manage seventh and eighth spots in the second.
But in the day’s final encounter, contested by a record-equalling 29-car BTCC grid, they struck back as Worcestershire’s Neal led Fife’s Shedden across the line to achieve a one-two result for their Honda squad. Plato was back in sixth meaning Neal has regained the championship lead – the 11th time it has changed hands this season.
Mat Jackson and James Nash are also not out of the running, lying fourth and fifth respectively in the standings behind leader Neal with Plato and Shedden tied in second place, just weeks after Plato wrote off his own title chances.
Plato, the defending champion and who also won the crown back in 2001, said: “Realistically I think that’s as far as we can go. We’ve made up some massive ground today, but Silverstone is going to be ideally suited for cars with turbo engines, which we don’t have. It will need something very strange to happen there to stop the Hondas, but never say never.”
The final three rounds of the BTCC 2011 competition take place at Silverstone on October 15 and 16.
