The fourth round of the 2007 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship at
Croft marked a milestone in the series as the North East venue wracked up ten years as a fixture on the calendar.
From an inaugural meeting that at times looked like a sailing regatta more than a motorsport event thanks to the weather, the former airfield has played host to some dramatic moments over ten years of racing – with some memorable racing action both on, and off, the circuit (think back to the ‘unique’ line employed round Clervaux by Jim Edwards en-route to the Production Class win back in 2001 as a example...)
However, 1997 didn’t just mark the first appearance of Croft on the BTCC scene, it also signalled the debut of driver by the name of
Jason Plato, who had grown up in the North East of England and was making the step up into touring cars with the crack
Williams Touring Car Engineering outfit – an offshoot of the Williams
F1 squad that had clinched the 1996
Formula One title with
Damon Hill.
Securing a double pole for his debut in the Renault Laguna at
Donington Park, and then adding a third straight top spot in qualifying for round three at
Silverstone, Plato would quickly make his on the BTCC – with wins later in the year at
Snetterton and Silverstone helping him to third in the championship standings, just a point behind the outgoing champion Frank Biela.
Since that debut season, Plato has gone on (at the time of writing) to start nearly 230 BTCC races, with 36 wins putting him second on the all time winners list alongside former team-mates Alain Menu and Yvan Muller – the latter being the man Plato defeated in dramatic style to clinch his only BTCC title to date back in 2001.
The home circuit:
With Croft and Plato both celebrating ten years since their respective BTCC debuts this year,
Crash.net took the chance to sit down with the current points leader to look back at the last ten years – with the circuit itself being a good place to start, even if Plato’s so called ‘highlights’ aren’t necessarily choices that would be top of many peoples list...
![Jason Plato in action during his debut BTCC season with the Williams Renault team back in 1997 [Pic credit: Still Photographic]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/335857.jpg)
