Jason Plato wins as Mat Jackson falters

Jason Plato took his fifth win of the 2012 British Touring Car Championship at Silverstone and closes on the Honda drivers in the standings, after race leader Mat Jackson retired whilst leading in the Motorbase Ford Focus ST.

Triple Eight MG driver Jason Plato held on to his lead at the start, but was harried in the early stages by the West Surrey Racing BMW of Rob Collard, who had his usual great start moving up from fourth to second.

There was mayhem on the second lap, as Chris James’s Team ES Racing Vauxhall ploughed into Howard Fuller’s Team HARD Honda at Copse, which eliminated the Vauxhall driver from the race, whilst at Becketts Andrew Jordan’s Eurotech Honda was spun by Andy Neate’s Triple Eight MG, with Jordan trapped in the gravel trap and out of the race.

Whilst the safety car was out, Tony Gilham spun the Thorney Motorsport Vauxhall out at Becketts as well and went no further. The race was restarted on lap eight, with Matt Neal ninth and Gordon Shedden tenth.

Mat Jackson in the Motorbase Performance Ford Focus was able to pass Rob Collard’s BMW on lap nine for second place, and then closed in on Jason Plato, taking the lead at Copse on lap 11.

There was disappointment for Matt Neal, as his Honda lost boost pressure and pulled into the pits to retire. Gordon Shedden was now battling on the outside of the top ten, but was unable to make any further progress forward, and was only able to move up through others misfortune.

Thankfully for Shedden, there was plenty of it, with Dan Welch’s Proton spun out with contact from Rob Collard on lap 13, and with the two Toyotas of Frank Wrathall and Adam Morgan coming together and forced out of the race.

The final key retirement was that of Mat Jackson, whose Ford Focus crawled to a stop on lap 22, handing Jason Plato back the lead, and the MG driver went on to take his fifth win of the season and close to within 19 points of Gordon Shedden in the standings.

Shedden finally ended up in seventh place and picked up nine points in the title battle. With Andrew Jordan’s retirement, Collard’s third in the independents’ classification closes him up to 43 points behind with 100 points remaining in the last five rounds.

Dave Newsham finished second for Team ES Racing, whilst their was some joy for Motorbase Performance as Aron Smith took his first podium result for the team in third.

The second race is scheduled to get underway at 14:27, with the grid as per the results of race one with Jason Plato starting on pole.