Jason Plato says he believes the early rounds of the season will be key to his hopes of securing a second Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship title.
The 2001 champion has finished in the top three of the standings in two of the last three seasons and was runner-up to
Matt Neal last season despite suffering a number of retirements over the course of the year.
Going into the new season, the SEAT team leader is the only one of the front runners from 2006 to have the stability of running the same car as last season, with Vauxhall, Team Halfords and Team RAC all forced to source new machinery to fit into the Super 2000 regulations.
With that in mind, the opening rounds of the season could prove to be key to the destiny of the title as, while others try to get new cars up to speed, Plato and team-mate Darren Turner will have a year of experience with the Leon under their belts.
“That for me has always been the key to putting a championship campaign together,” Plato admitted in a recent interview with
Crash.net Radio. “You have to score points in the early races – not in terms of building a buffer up, but more because it just takes the pressure off and means that we are in a position to capitalise on new car blues or teething problems that other teams may have.
“Ok, the
BMW is an existing car, but WSR don't have experience of running it and there is only so much testing that you can do pre-season and testing isn't racing. We have to capitalise on any mistakes or any lack of experience that other teams have in the early part of the year and it will be crucial for us to score big points early on.
“Certainly for the first few meetings, that is our target. Not necessarily to have the mind-set that we are going to win races, but that we have reliability on our car, know what it likes and that it is all about bagging points and not getting involved in silly scrapes. We don't need to go out there like it is the final race of the year, we just need to score consistently and then when the season really gets underway, we have that buffer.”
