Neal: “Jason will have his mirrors full of Honda”

Despite being headed by title rival Jason Plato, Matt Neal is pleased with a front row start for Sunday’s first race, and remains in the championship hunt. Neal and teammate Gordon Shedden will line-up second and third on the grid for the first race of the day, with the double BTCC Champion ominously warning Plato that he’s “not here to make friends.”

Speaking to the official BTCC website, Neal said, “I had a difficult couple of practice sessions and never thought I’d get it onto the front row in qualifying so I’m over the moon with that.

“As for tomorrow, Gordon is always fast out of the blocks, Jason’s going to have his mirrors full of Honda and I’m not here to make friends.”

While the Worcestershire driver may have been pleased with his qualifying performance, Shedden was less so, saying, “I’m slightly disappointed with that. There were a few incidents out on track which got in my way and I never got a really clean lap together. All I can is give it a go and see how it all stacks up.”

Plato though begins ahead of both Civics, and with a points advantage, making him the favourite as the BTCC enters the final day of the season. Despite carrying 45 kilograms of ballast, Plato dominated proceedings on Saturday, topping the sheets in each of the day’s three timed sessions.

“RML haven’t stopped since Donington – they’ve been looking through the data to see what we’ve learnt over the season since we were here for the media day and have given me a great car,” said Plato.

“And when you have a great car beneath you, it makes it a little easier to do a good job.”

Despite having 58 career BTCC victories to his name, just two shy of Andy Rouse’s record, Plato has just the one BTCC title, from back in 2001, and admits he is nervous going into the decider, but positively so.

“There are nerves there, to be honest, but healthy ones. We’ve still got a long way to go, but mission accomplished today. We’re where we want to be and in doing that, have taken another point – which of course could prove vital.”

One man surprised by Plato’s pace on Saturday is Team Aon Principle Mike Earle, whose driver Tom Onslow-Cole is the outsider of the four protagonists for BTCC silverware.

“We are stunned by the pace of the Chevrolet today!” said Earle. “Especially Plato, who’s on pole with 45 kilo’s of ballast which is almost unheard of. Tom Chilton did well to get up to fifth and we are obviously a little disappointed with tenth for Onslow-Cole. But we’ll give it everything tomorrow and count the points up at the end of the day and see where we are.”

Now lying 24 points off the lead, and with three drivers ahead of him, Onslow-Cole concedes that race one is going to be vital for his chances of a first BTCC crown.

“It is still all to play for, although that obviously wasn’t the qualifying we needed. We are throwing everything at it though, we just needed a few tenths to be up there with Jason. We took a risk on the set-up to try and find that time, which didn’t pay off. We can bounce back from this though, I need a good start and hopefully we can come through to the top five, then it is all to play for in race two.”