“This is a political game at times, more often than not, and it is a shame it happened, but I’m friends with Vauxhall now. It wasn’t with Vauxhall that I had my differences, it was with two people who are no longer involved with running the administration of the Vauxhall team - we just didn’t see eye to eye. They had their ideas on who should win and it wasn’t me – and I wasn’t happy with that.
"There was awful team orders imposed on me in 2000 where I was leading the championship and they made me move over for Yvan and I did, on more than one occasion, yield to him when I didn’t feel it was right – but I did what I was told. We were told in 2001 that it would be open and it wasn’t. I was told to do stuff which was hidden from Vauxhall, there were messages given to me from the pitwall which meant move over - although they couldn’t show it as they weren’t allowed by Vauxhall - and it was crap.
“In then end I said ‘stuff it, I’m not doing it’ and then it was a case of who do I side with - I’ve told Vauxhall what is going on and caused a storm and they have said they don’t want it, so I sided with Vauxhall. But the team make the choice and Yvan was the chosen one – but as it turned out he didn’t win.”
With the political wrangling going on in the background, it is perhaps little wonder that the 2001 isn’t right at the top of Plato’s highlights of his BTCC career – although two very different debuts were deemed worthy of a mention.
“Winning the title is a highlight I suppose, but an equally big highlight was my actual debut with
Williams Renault,” he said. “I muscled my way into that drive by stalking Frank Williams and I turned what wasn’t even an opportunity, into a life changing opportunity. I can remember, like it was yesterday, the first three races.
![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)
