Jason Plato admits frustration at being “out of the game”

Jason Plato admits he is frustrated with the way in which his 2017 BTCC campaign has panned out having conceded that his championship bid is already over at the half-way stage of the season.

Although the double champion secured his first podium finish of the campaign in the final race at Croft after a long battle with Rob Austin, Plato goes into the summer break down in 15th place in the standings; some 139 points behind current leader Gordon Shedden.

Prior to the Croft meeting, Plato had failed to break into the top ten, with BMR having struggled to get the best out of his Subaru Levorg ever since his heavy accident in the second race of the year at Brands Hatch.

A number of regulation changes brought in during the winter have also hampered the team and whilst boost revisions carried out by TOCA on the Mountune-engined cars at Oulton Park has seen the Levorg – as well as the Ford Focus run by Motorbase and Team Parker – brought closer to other marques on the grid, Plato admitted he had been frustrated by the fact that his championship challenge had failed to materialise.

“Of course I’m frustrated because I’m out of the game,” he told TouringCarTimes. “The championship is over for me this season and when you look at why it has gone, there are lots of reasons.

“I have a car that hit the wall at Brands Hatch and that hasn’t been the same since, and we’ve not had the performance that we should have had in the opening rounds of the year. Okay so we might get that performance half way through the season, but is that correct? I don’t think so.

“For the team, I’m glad that Ash is doing so well because we are all here to represent Adrian Flux, Subaru and BMR, but the frustration for me comes from the fact I’ve not been able to deliver what I know I can to help the team because of the problems with my car.

“The engineering team we have here is first class and if they can’t get it working then its clear something is wrong and we need to test to sort it out.”

Putting his personal frustrations to one side, Plato added that it was vital for BMR to keep pushing this season to keep team-mate Sutton in contention for the title, with the youngster having closed to within 20 points of top spot at Croft.

“It’s so important that – as a team – we stay motivated, as Ash has got himself right up there in the championship,” he said, “and whilst I might be out of it, we have to keep him in the mix.

“I’m looking forward to the mid-season break to recharge the batteries and come back fighting for the second half of the championship.”