Jason Plato not surprised with MG pace at Donington

British Touring Car Championship leader Jason Plato says he’s not surprised about the pace of the new MG6 GT of Triple Eight Race Engineering at Donington Park, and believes criticism of the car’s performance from some teams is unfounded.

The 2001 and 2010 Champion qualified just over five-hundredths of a second ahead of Gordon Shedden’s Honda Civic, which is also built to the BTCC’s latest Next Generation Touring Car (NGTC) specifications.

Asked if he was surprised about how strong the new MG has been ‘out of the box’ with very little testing before the season, Plato told TouringCarTimes:
“In all honesty, yes. I’m not surprised how strong it is here, but certainly after qualifying at Brands Hatch whilst the car performed really well lap time wise, it wasn’t nice to drive. It was very difficult and it wasn’t doing the things we wanted it to do, but we made a big jump overnight…and obviously on the back of race three at Brands Hatch, whilst I didn’t propagate this…the target was to come here and get pole and we thought that was a realistic expectation.”

“We didn’t know what the 45 kilos would do, we know it’s made a difference, it definitely hurts, but we’ve got some real pace in this car and its on the brakes, and into the corners, that’s where we’re really strong. And if you look at the races tomorrow and you look back at Brands Hatch you’ll see that all this nonsense from all the others whingeing it’s all in a straight line, it’s nonsense, because it isn’t in a straight line. I’ve got no more power than anyone else out there, the engines have been equalised, what I have got this year is I’ve not had an 80 horsepower difference. It’s all about the chassis, and Triple Eight know how to make a great chassis.”

After three years with the RML Chevrolet team, and before that five years with SEAT, Plato is now back at Triple Eight Race Engineering this year, a team with which he won the 2001 Championship in the first year of the post-Super Touring era.

On how easy it’s been to gel with a team with which he hasn’t raced with for ten years, Plato responded:
“I’ve still got the same No.1 and No.2 I had when I won the Championship in 2001. Obviously H (Ian Harrison) is the figurehead and the kingpin and the driving force behind it all…so it’s a familiar bunch of people. The biscuits are still hidden in the same place in the workshop, I know where the coffee machine is and a lot of the fabricators there are still the same guys so it is a little bit like coming home.”

Jason Plato currently leads the drivers’ standings with 52 points, just four points ahead of reigning champion Matt Neal after the first round at Brands Hatch after a strong opening round of the Championship, and lays out the team’s plan for the next few rounds:
“The first three events of this year the mind set has been we have to learn, treat them as test sessions,” said Plato. “If we can get some good points along the way, so be it. After Thruxton then we’ll start a development programme with all the things we’ve learned and all the test sessions we’ve been doing.”

Plato and Triple Eight have also made the switch to the NGTC platform this year, with Triple Eight replacing their Super 2000 Vauxhall Vectras with the new MG6 GT and Plato moving across from the normally aspirated Chevrolet Cruze last year, and notes the positives and negatives over the series’ new format.

“Whilst NGTC is working, for me it’s a little bit restrictive,” said Plato. “But I have to say it is working well. It’s not right yet, we still haven’t got a car that is easy to drive, we haven’t got a car that’s consistent in the way it reacts so there’s still some way to go, but they’re performing very well at the moment.”

“I think the cars look good, the body-kits look good and the side exit exhausts add some flavour, obviously we want some more flames out of them, I think it’s got the makings of being a good route for the future. But I’d like a little bit more freedom for teams like Triple Eight, Team Dynamics, West Surrey Racing when they adopt them, a little bit more so they can add their own manufacturing and their own engineering solutions to the problems that we’ve got now.”