Jason Plato was left suffering mixed emotions at
Knockhill despite extending his Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship lead over Fabrizio Giovanardi to during the annual trip to Scotland.
The SEAT Sport driver went into the weekend eager to try and extend his four point advantage over the Italian in the standings but only managed to open the lead up to nine points ahead of the season finale at
Thruxton – and a meeting that many feel will be better suited to Giovanardi's Vauxhall Vectra.
Things started well for Plato with a podium finish in the opening race of the weekend and Giovanardi down in sixth after his coming together with
Tom Onslow-Cole, but the Italian then bounced back to outscore Plato in race two.
A further podium finish in race three helped Plato to slightly extend his lead, although he was more happy with the results of the weekend from a team point of view than his own, with a double victory for Darren Turner leaving the team in good shape in both the teams' and manufacturers' standings.
"I'm pleased as a team as we did a great job, with Darren's two wins and my two thirds," he told
Crash.net Radio. "If we look at it, we are three points behind Vauxhall in the manufacturers which is pretty good and we are looking almost unassailable in the teams' standings – so from that point of view, it's gone well.
"Yes, I am also pleased to have extended my own lead but we should have been further up the road. Again things didn't work out for me this weekend. Our speed round the lap is good when we are in clean air, but when we are behind other cars we lose our corner speed as we can only go as fast as them. We are losing too much speed on the straights which is frustrating – I made three good overtaking moves today but couldn't make them stick as we aren't quick where we need to be."
