Plato wins to keep title hopes alive as Jordan retires

Triple Eight MG’s Jason Plato doubled up in the second Brands Hatch race to take the title fight to the final round, in a fraught, drama-filled encounter which saw championship leader Andrew Jordan retire.

Plato led home team-mate Sam Tordoff to close the gap to Eurotech Racing’s Jordan to 15 points, with a maximum of 22 left to play for, as Jordan retired his Honda Civic with a broken wheel on lap two after contact with Honda Racing Team’s Matt Neal.

The race’s major talking point came on the entry to Surtees, when a cautious Jordan left the door open for Aron Smith, who passed him on the inside and hit Rob Collard’s West Surrey Racing BMW 125i on the apex.

Jordan was forced into evasive action to miss Collard, and Neal had nowhere to go, clipping Jordan’s rear left wheel. Jordan retired for the first time this season while Neal finished 18th after a pitstop. He is now out of the running, and his misery was compounded by a fire in the engine bay of his Honda Civic on the slowing down lap.

Neal’s team-mate Gordon Shedden is still in with an outside chance of the title, but he is 20 points behind with a maximum of 22 to play for. He finished seventh after an incredible save on lap one, where he slewed across the track on the run-up to Druids, but somehow managed to catch it and avoid being hit by the pack.

And as if the drama could not be ramped up any further, series supremo Alan Gow drew the reigning champion out of the hat for the reverse grid pole position.

Of the rest of the runners, Motorbase Performance’s Mat Jackson came through to an excellent third from ninth, with Speedworks Motorsport’s Dave Newsham making equally impressive progress to fourth.

Smith was fifth ahead of Jack Goff, the Tony Gilham Racing man taking a career-best sixth in his Vauxhall Insignia. Behind Shedden, Adam Morgan, Tom Onslow-Cole and Frank Wrathall rounded out the top 10.

Morgan had been fourth in the early stages, but had an off-track excursion at Paddock Hill on lap five, while Lea Wood took the Jack Sears Trophy honours, finishing 16th in his JWT Performance Vauxhall Vectra.

The 30th and final race of the season is at 17:04 BST.