Jason Plato: “It’s over” [With video]

Jason Plato was left fuming after the race three incident with Tom Boardman where the reigning champion was pushed off on lap four while in the lead.
“I am not sure what I should or should not say to be fair,” said Plato in an after-race interview with ITV.

Boardman used the power advantage of his NGTC engine down the main straight of the Knockhill circuit and gave Plato a tap before they got in the corner, where the final tap and the off came.

“I really don’t know what is going on, because the closing speed that Tom [Boardman] has got on me… Bearing in mind that I have zero ballast with the best team in the business, I’m pretty good at my job, my record speaks for it self. To get hit that hard, even before we got to the braking area, you can see how fast the turbo cars are in relative to us. It’s not really on is it?” said Plato.

The race weekend at Knockhill left Plato with 35 points up to championship leader Gordon Shedden and the Chevrolet driver says that there is no chance of him ever catching up to the leaders.

“It’s over. To be honest, even before this weekend it’s over. We need to have such a massive points gap before going to Silverstone [finale] because Silverstone is just three big long straights and we would get annihilated there. We are, what, 80 % in to the championship, we haven’t got anything like parity,” said Plato.

The BTCC organisers, TOCA, has lowered the turbo pressure of the NGTC engined S2000 cars a number of times during the season in order to try and keep the differences between the cars even. But according to Plato, there is more work to be done.

“The real fans of this game understand that it’s not whinging. You have to look at what is going on, the previous years in touring cars, there was no disparity in a straight line between the leading cars, while this year it is a whole different kettle of fish. And I know it is a difficult job for TOCA to equalize, but they have got a lot of work still to do… …It is a bit frustrating as all I want to have is a chance to race and if I get beaten fairly and squarely, then that’s great. But it’s like trying to swim a length of a swimming pool with led weights, its not a lot of fun,” said Plato.

So far, the BTCC organizers has not penalized Boardman after the incident with Plato, shown in the video below.