Photo: PSP Images

Jason Plato maintains lead of championship at Thruxton

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Triple Eight Race Engineering’s Jason Plato maintained his lead of the drivers’ championship after the latest round of the 2012 British Touring Car Championship at Thruxton, while team mate Andy Neate endured a difficult weekend.

Plato made a strong start to this Thruxton weekend in his NGTC MG6, finishing the first practice session in third and the second practice session in second. His qualifying session ended early after a high speed crash at Church, but in spite of this his fastest time saw him qualify second.

Contact with pole sitter Andrew Jordan at the first corner on the on lap one saw the MG6 out on the grass, but Plato was able to rejoin in fifth. At the time the race was red flagged 13 laps later Plato had made his way back up to third. He made up a further position in race two, started under the safety car due to the treacherous wet conditions, to cross the line in second.

This saw Plato start in eighth for the third race after the top nine finishing positions were reversed. The rain returned as the green flag was waved on race three and Plato was able to move up to fourth. The latter half of his race was spent pressuring Frank Wrathall for the final podium spot, but Wrathall was able to hold him off.

Plato was happy with his Thruxton weekend: “What a great weekend for the MG KX Momentum Racing team on my side of the garage. We’re still leading the points in the drivers’ championship and considering that we hadn’t run the car in the wet before, a 2nd, 3rd and 4th should be pleasing for everybody.”

Andy Neate’s Thruxton weekend did not go so smoothly with an electrical issue hampering his Saturday performance. The Triple Eight Race Engineering driver qualified 16th for Sunday’s first race, finishing it in the same position after being involved in an incident in the early stages of the race. The electrical issue re-emerged in the second race with Neate unable to progress beyond 16th. This same issue saw him retire from the third race after a handful of laps.

Neate was understandably disappointed: “It’s been another disappointing weekend for me. Yet again we’ve had failures from a common component supplied to us, which is very frustrating. I’m looking forward to the chance to do some testing for the first time with this car and coming back stronger at Oulton Park next time out.”