Plato takes victory as MacDowall suffers gear failure

Jason Plato won the first race at Snetterton from Airwaves BMW’s Mat Jackson. Pole sitter MacDowall’s car broke down at the start robbing the youngster of a good result.

At the start, Mat Jackson moved up ahead of Tom Chilton, as Alex MacDowall’s Chevrolet Cruze slowly moved down the inside of the track with what was identified as a broken gear lever.

Chilton fought hard to retake second from Jackson, but in doing so, compromised his position and fell back behind the two Honda Civic’s of Gordon Shedden & Matt Neal.

Within one lap, Chilton re-passed Neal for fourth and then moved up ahead of Shedden on lap 7 to claim the final spot on the podium.

Steven Kane put on a strong charge in the second Airwaves BMW to move from 11th to 7th, but the top mover was undoutedly the second Team Aon Focus of Tom Onslow-Cole, starting from last and working his way up to sixth by the end of the race.

Onslow-Cole’s hardest challenge came from Matt Neal, whom he caught and initially passed on lap 14. Neal managed to re-take the position briefly on the switchback, making contact with the Ford in the process, but down the straight the Focus breezed past the Civic to take sixth place – but couldn’t close down the gap on James Nash in fifth before the chequered flag.

Three laps later, championship leader Matt Neal suffered a front right puncture, on a circuit which threatened to cause problems for the front-wheel drive cars late in the race.

Championship leader Neal didn’t finish the race as a result, whilst Plato, conserving his tyres well enough to pull out a gap of over two seconds at one point to the BMW of Mat Jackson, took his third win of the year and moves into the lead of the championship.

Jason will now start on pole next to Mat Jackson, but will now carry an additional 9kg of success ballast for the second race.