BTCC Weekend Superstar: Jason Plato

Picking a weekend superstar from the championship's annual visit north of the border was difficult. There was the return of Dave Newsham and his top ten finish, Matt Neal's charge through the field to win race two or the incredible drive from Mat Jackson to hold off everyone in race three. In the end though it was the impressive performance of Jason Plato across the weekend, including race one victory, that makes him our weekend superstar.

Plato's weekend of success started in qualifying. He spent most the sesiion in the top three but a red flag with just five minutes remaining allowed him to pounce. On the very last lap of the session Plato snatched pole away from Tom Ingram, breaking the qualifying record in the process. A 51.521 second lap time gave Plato his first pole in over a year and the forty ninth of his career.

As the lights went out in race one, Plato made a fantastic start and quickly moved clear of the field, building up a lead of nearly two and a half seconds over Jack Goff. A late race safety car didn't seem to phase Plato either as the former double champion remained in the lead to take his ninety fifth career win in his five hundredth race. A driver leading every lap unpressured is not something that is said often, at Knockhill it is said even less often. The dominance and speed that Plato showed in race one is part of the reason he's our weekend superstar.

However the main reason Plato is our weekend superstar is his defence in race two. With seventy five kilograms of ballast on-board, he managed to hold off the much quicker cars of temmate Turkington, Jack Goff, Tom Ingram and Sam Tordoff for twenty two laps. With only five laps remaining, Tordoff finally managed to find a way past the much heavier Subaru with Matt Neal also finding a way past on the following lap. This was only the fourth time this season where the race one winner would finish on the podium and that shows just how good a job of defending Plato did. To hold off that many cars for twenty two laps around Knockhill with maximum ballast is simply incredible.

All of this saw Plato move from tenth to seventh in the championship standings and he's now just fifty three points behind leader Tordoff. Another weekend like this would put Plato right into championship contention.

The commanding victory in race one coupled with the incredible defence in race two and another podium in race three show that the former double champion is back to his former glory. He definitely deserves to be our weekend superstar.

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