Honda delighted with result – wants more rain

Honda Racing Team are delighted with their one-two finish in the first BTCC race of the day, but suspect Plato’s racing conservatively.

Speaking to TouringCarTimes, Honda Team Manager Steve Neal was delighted for the win, but rues not acheiving a similar result at round one:
“That’s what we should have had at Thruxton, you could have seen that when the tyres let us down there. We were far too aggressive on our set-up I guess, and here we went for a set-up which was a bit of a compromise, as we did a race run yesterday in free practice and the deterioration in our lap times was too great.”

On Jason Plato, Neal suspects Plato’s got the championship in mind:
“Jason’s out to win the championship, he’s out to build points. What was the difference to him? Two points. And frankly I think he’d rather have the two points then crash getting second place”.

On Race Two, Neal expects a hard fight to repeat the result:
“The Boardman car won’t be as competitive in the dry, Steven (Kane) is a super driver and he’ll do as good a job as can be done with a BMW, I’ m sure of that, he’s the best of the BMW drivers by a long shot, and I expect him to be up there and having a go.”

“I’d like it to rain, it’s supposed to rain at 4 o’clock so I’m looking forward to that!”

The sun has broken out at Rockingham for race two, and of course the Honda’s will carry maximum success ballast from their front row starting positions.