Jason Plato: “I’m back in the game now”

Jason Plato was pleased with the progress the Team BMR crew had made with the new Subaru Levorg at Oulton Park, but also made it clear that there is a lot of work still to be done.

The two-time BTCC champion showed front-running pace for the first time in 2016 with the development programme of the all-new Subaru Levorgs starting at the opening round of the season at Brands Hatch.

“It’s quite a big story for me because we’ve been going in a direction with my car from day one that’s in a totally different direction to Colin’s,” explained Plato, speaking to TouringCarTimes. “Even though at Donington Park and Brands Hatch I thought is this the right way to go, we were on a development cycle so we had to get through with it so we were still persevering this morning. The car was so bad this morning that we decided to bin it, bolt Colin’s set up on and it’s transformed my car. It’s almost like a eureka moment and I’m like “f***ing hell, this is how it feels”. And now if I think back I’ve always been slightly behind the car and a bit of a passenger, wondering what’s it going to do next but I’m the boss again now.

“Previously the grip had no stretch to it, the good news is we’ve found the problem, we now know the particular part of the setup that I don’t like and that’s the difference. I’m back in the game now, chassis wise we’re in a good place actually.”

The team struggled for out-and-out pace at Brands Hatch and Donington Park, before withdrawing from the Thruxton meeting following a fire in James Cole’s car at Donington Park. With the improvements now coming at the Team BMR camp, Plato explained how the development process now relies on a boost increase to bring the team in line with their rivals, with a definite gap visible through the speed traps.

“I followed quite a lot of cars out there including Matt Neal who has 66kgs of ballast and he just walked away from me in the straights. However, we have a process we have to go through, the new inlet manifold allows us to utilise the boost increase which we should get because it’s plain to see that our engine is not compatible with the low boost level that we’ve got. The problem is had we not changed the manifold the engine would not respond to boost, so now that manifold has made us able to utilise any boost increase we’re going to get because we need it.

“We’re in the fortunate decision in that we know exactly what horsepower the [Motorbase Performance] Ford has as it goes on the same dyno at Mountune. So we know how much we’re off, and we also know how much boost we need to get up where the Ford is and it’s a long way away from where we are. I have every confidence in ToCA that once they’ve analysed the data now they’ve seen our new inlet manifold that that doesn’t give power it allows us to utilise the boost that I’m sure we’re going to get, it’s now a case of look at what we’ve got and give us some more boost, because I think it’s clear. Only the boost will improve our performance, the manifold doesn’t, it just lets us utilise that boost. So we’re in a good shape.”