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Jason Plato releases Brands Hatch boost changes

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Triple Eight Race Engineering driver Jason Plato has released the boost changes for this weekend’s final round in order to dispel accusations that his MG6 GT has been carrying an unfair advantage.

The boost levels of the engines throughout the field are derived using a formula which was agreed by all members of the BTCC’s Technical Working Group, which has a representative from each team on the grid.

The levels however are never published by championship organisers TOCA, and are only known amongst the teams and the officials of the championship.

With strong criticism coming from some areas after the last round at Silverstone, where Motorbase Performance’s Mat Jackson and MG’s Jason Plato took wins from the back of the grid in the second and third races of the day whilst other teams comparatively struggled, most notably the Hondas, two-time BTCC champion Jason Plato has published the movements in boost for this weekend on the BTCC’s official forum at BTCC.net.

This isn’t an official announcement and therefore none of these values are verified, but the details that Plato’s posted shows that the Honda will benefit from the largest increase in boost compared to Silverstone, with an increase of 0.05 bar. The Speedworks Toyota Avensises (which run with the Swindon-built TOCA engine) gain 0.025 bar, as does the Vauxhall Insignia, now in the hands of Team HARD, and the three BMW 320sis of West Surrey Racing.

There’s no change in boost level for the two Motorbase Performance-run Super 2000-spec Ford Focus STs of Liam Griffin and Aron Smith, or for the AmD Tuning Volkswagen Golf of Oliver Jackson.

Losing 0.025 bar are a number of cars which fared well at Silverstone, including Dan Welch’s Proton, the two Rob Austin Racing Audis, Mat Jackson’s NGTC Ford Focus, the S2000 Honda Civic which will now be driven by Aaron Williamson, the Vauxhall Vectras of Team ES Racing and JWT Performance and Frank Wrathall’s Toyota, which runs with an X CTech-R built engine based on a Toyota unit.

Losing the most boost is the Triple Eight MG, with a reduction of 0.05 bar. The baseline figures weren’t published, so an overall comparison of boost levels isn’t possible, but also would be of limited value as the performance levels of the engines isn’t directly tied to boost level.

The boost adjustments are in addition to the championship’s success ballast system, which will see Gordon Shedden carry 45kg of weight in his Honda as he’s the points leader, with Jason Plato carrying 36kg and Matt Neal 27kg.