Plato extends lead with a race two win at Brands Hatch

Jason Plato led a lights-to-flag victory in a less frenetic race two, with Gordon Shedden driving through to finish second to score Honda’s first podium of the weekend.

Frank Wrathall’s Toyota wasn’t able to take part in the race, and with the Audi still to appear on track, 21 cars took to the grid for the second race of the day.

Tom Chilton had a terrible start from third on the grid, adversely there was an over-ambitious start for the Chevrolet of Alex MacDowall, who initally moved up to third ahead of Chilton, but was judged to have jumped the start and was given a drive through penalty. This allowed the Triple Eight Vauxhall James Nash back up into third, who had fallen behind the Chevrolet after sliding wide through Paddock Hill bend on the first lap.

Further back, a slow start for the other Arena Ford of Andy Neate was the catalyst for an accident, with Tom Onslow-Cole’s VW Golf attempting to charge down the inside the car of his former team, but with the Special Tuning Racing SEAT of Tom Boardman also bouncing down the inside trying to pass the slower Volkswagen, both cars found themselves out of race on the first lap.

Andrew Jordan, who has been on the pace all weekend, was up to 11th at the end of the first lap as the safety car was called to recover Boardman’s stricken SEAT.

At the restart, Gordon Shedden quickly passed Nash for third and joined the top pairing of Jason Plato and Mat Jackson, with the Motorbase Performance Ford fighting hard for the lead in the early stages against the weighed down Chevrolet of Plato, now carrying 45kg of penalty ballast.

Eventually, Jackson’s Ford appeared to suffer with its tyres and fell back from Plato, and had to defend hard from the Honda Civic of Gordon Shedden. On the 23rd lap, Shedden was able to pass the Focus ST as it was held up behind the spinning Toyota of Tony Hughes and claimed second, with Jackson finishing third and the top independent runner.

Andrew Jordan and Matt Neal moved together as a pair though the field in the later stages, breaking into the top ten passing Rob Collard, Dave Newsham and later Tom Chilton in a struggling Ford to finish sixth and seventh after starting 16th and 21st respectively.

Collard later passed the rival BMW of Newsham for ninth, with Tony Gilham passing the Geoff Steel Racing car on the final lap, robbing Newsham of his second top ten finish of the day.

Plato now leads the championship with 32 points, 9 points clear of the second placed James Nash driving for Triple Eight, with Mat Jackson third on 17.

The top seven will be reversed for the final race after a random draw, which means Matt Neal will start from pole alongside Andrew Jordan for the final race of the day at 17:05 BST.