Triple Eight MG’s Jason Plato bounced back from retirement for the third race at Silverstone to take the win from 20th on the grid, going three better than Mat Jackson had done in race two for his victory. Plato is now just 15 points behind Gordon Shedden in the standings.
Nick Foster started from pole position in the West Surrey Racing BMW and had a great start, leading by some margin going into the first corner. Dan Welch in the Proton and Rob Austin in the Audi seemed to be Foster’s early threats, though both were bottled up behind the boost hampered Honda of Andrew Jordan through the first few corners.
Austin then drove through into second with Welch third, but the two drivers made contact at Copse on the third lap, and spun themselves out of contention for the win.
This saw Rob Collard emerge in second in the #8 West Surrey Racing BMW, with Foster effectively leading a WSR 1-2.
At this point, Jason Plato had already worked his way forward to ninth place in the MG, despite having an engine change in the short break between races two and three.
On lap six, Matt Neal’s Honda and Lea Wood’s Vauxhall made contact in the midfield, with Neal eliminated from the race. This means that the reigning champion failed to score a point all day, and would drop to third in the drivers’ championship standings by the end of the race.
Plato was continuing to surge forward, passing Andrew Jordan’s Eurotech Honda on lap nine and passing both Rob Collard and Gordon Shedden’s Honda on the next lap to move up into second.
Though Foster had built up a strong lead early on, it wasn’t enough as Plato closed in on Foster at incredible speed and passed the BMW driver at Woodcote on lap 12 to take the lead and go on to win his sixth win of the season.
Mat Jackson’s Motorbase Ford, despite carrying 45kg of ballast, was able to make similarly strong progress, moving up to second place passing the BMWs of Collard and Foster as well as Shedden’s Honda.
Shedden faltered in the latter stages, and fell back to sixth behind the three BMWs of West Surrey Racing and picked up 10 points in the race.
Shedden still leads the drivers’ championship going to the season finale in two weeks time at Brands Hatch, though his margin is now just 15 points over Jason Plato, with Matt Neal 31 points behind in third. Andrew Jordan is still mathematically in the hunt, though he’s 61 points down with 67 available at the final.
Andrew Jordan’s lead in the independents’ championship has been reduced to 30 points over Rob Collard with 60 points available at Brands Hatch. Mat Jackson and Tom Onslow-Cole are also in contention, 46 and 59 points behind respectively.
The season finale takes place at the Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit on October 21st.
