“I had a carbon fibre component come off in the cockpit which got stuck behind the brake pedal and the throttle, so when I came off the throttle going into the complex - which is fifth gear and around 130mph - the throttle jammed open and when I went for the brakes, they wouldn’t go down. You could say I was in the shit and I had a split second to decide what to do and that was either have a monumental accident with the wall or try and slow myself down with someone else – and unfortunately for Gabriele [Tarquini], he was the choice I took! I fired him out of the race but I think I stopped myself being put in hospital, which he understood and was fine with. It was one of those things where you have to make your call and live with it – but it was a big shunt.”
The highs and lows:
Looking back over his BTCC career to date, the obvious highlight to an outsider looking in would be the 2001 season, when – in the first year of the new BTC regulations – Plato became embroiled in a titanic battle for the title with Vauxhall team-mate Muller.
In a season featuring 26 races, the pair took 14 wins between them but as the year progressed, so the relationship between the two soured – culminating in an incident in the feature race at
Silverstone where Plato was given a 30 second penalty for contact with his team-mate on the final lap.
At the end of the season, it was Plato who took the title by 18 points but then came a split from the team and a departure from the BTCC scene for two years.
“I look back and I won the title in 2001 but I wouldn’t have said it was the happiest time of my life,” he said. “There was huge politics going on at Vauxhall at that time and I didn’t like the way things were run – and ultimately I left at the end of 2001 after winning the title. But it is in the record books, I won the title at the end of what I think is one of the hardest battles that touring cars has ever seen. It was tough stuff.
![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)
