Jason Plato endured a trying weekend as the HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship made its annual trip to Rockingham, with the SEAT Sport UK managing a best finish of sixth from the second meeting of the season.
On the weekend when he made his 250th BTCC start, Plato slipped from third to sixth in the championship standings and now lies 28 points behind defending champion Fabrizio Giovanardi in the race for the title.
Race start in difficult fashion for the SEAT man when he ran wide near the start of the opening race and was forced to battle through the field to make it into the points in ninth place although his hopes of improving on that in race two were hit by contact at Deene on the opening lap from the Halfords Honda of Tom Chilton.
It forced Plato to pit to allow the team to check for damage to his Leon TDi although a Safety Car period meant he was able to close onto the rear of the field for the restart.
From there he battled through the field to ninth place despite an ill-handing and crabbing car following the lap one contact, although he just missed out on securing a place on the front row for the final race when the reverse grid draw saw the top eight positions reversed.
Things went from bad to worse ahead of race three when Plato picked up a 30 second penalty when the team was working on the car beyond the allotted time on the grid and it meant that he was once again forced to come through the field, with the 2001 champion stealing sixth in a drag-race to the line from the
BMW of
Colin Turkington.
However, on a weekend when he should have celebrated a historic BTCC milestone, Plato was instead left to reflect on what might have been and said he wasn't happy with how the incident with Chilton in race two had affected his challenge.
"Sometimes you have days where everything you do just doesn't go quite according to plan, and this was one of those days," he said. "It's been a bit of a lottery, and we haven't had much luck - although in race two and three we've had some great drives back up through the field from last place.
"The weekend for me was ruined by Tom Chilton in race two. You can't change your line in a braking area, and coming down from 130mph into a hairpin corner he just turned left into me. It wrecked his race as well as mine. We had to pit to check the car over and from last position we finished ninth - and then we were a little unlucky as the top eight was selected to start race three in reverse order.
"We made a great call to change tyres before the start of race three, but then that didn't work to our advantage either when everyone was allowed to do the same, and when we were doing safety checks on the car we got a 30 second penalty.
"It's just been a day full of annoying things which haven't worked and haven't gone our way, but which so nearly did. We've found some performance in the car and we continue to learn about it, but in many ways it's just been a frustrating day to forget."
