Jason Plato hopes weight and tyre issues don’t harm series

Team BMR’s Jason Plato sounded a note of caution about how the new rules for the 2015 BTCC season are playing out, suggesting that great racing is the main ingredient needed for a good show.

Plato expressed concerns about the impact of the 75kg maximum ballast on the performance of cars, and also how the cars perform on soft tyres at maximum weight.

The double champion was speaking after a weekend where he secured his first win for Team BMR in race one, and backed that up with a fifth and eighth in the final two encounters.

Speaking to TouringCarTimes, Plato said: “I question the weight of the cars on the soft tyre. I understand why Alan Gow and the team want to make this a spectacle, but you just need great racing for a spectacle.

“There’s too many punctures going on at the moment – why is that? Why the difference from this to last year?

“Yes, we’ve got to make it exciting for the crowd, but we don’t want to turn it into a circus. You don’t want to come into a weekend where you’ve got loads of weight on and it screws you up.

“I think it would be a shame if it goes that way.”

Having described his first race win to TouringCarTimes earlier on Sunday, Plato gave his verdict on the rest of the weekend’s action.

“Race two I should have done better – I screwed up, I didn’t have it in first gear at the start. I sussed it out before the lights went off and pulled a gear. That could have been different, because I could have had a third or a second,” he said.

“Then we ran into brake problems because we were in the pack. Had I not messed my start up through having a senior moment then I wouldn’t have been in the pack.

“The brakes were hot and were holding me back, not balance or grip.”

On race three, he added: “Unfortunately on the soft tyre I’m not in the race. I’ve got to get my mind out of being in the race, and that just means cruising around to be honest.

“You’re not in the race until four laps to go, and then you can push a bit. I’m not a big fan of the soft tyre – from a racing driver’s perspective I don’t like it, because I’m not racing, I’m just cruising around.”

Thoughts now turn to Thruxton, a circuit where the Volkswagen CC has historically been quick in the hands of Tom Onslow-Cole.

Plato said: “We’re going to a track where everyone’s on the same tyres, there’s no soft tyres. We’ve got to go there and go bang, bang, bang and try and get some wins.

“The weight won’t hurt as much because it’s fast and flowing.”