Photo: PSP Images

Jason Plato celebrates Knockhill pole position, despite traffic-hit lap

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Jason Plato claimed his first pole position of the 2016 season for Team BMR Subaru as he heads towards a milestone start in the British Touring Car Championship, his 500th race. Plato’s pole came in an incident-heavy session in which the two-time champion says he struggled to get a clear lap.

Plato’s pole lap came in the dying moments of qualifying, as he was one of the last drivers to cross the line and set a new lap record at the circuit, demoting the Speedworks Toyota of Tom Ingram to second position for tomorrow’s Race 1 grid.

Although happy to score pole, the 48-year-old was disappointed with the traffic and behaviour of drivers on the 1.3 mile circuit.

“It was frustrating as I couldn’t get a lap,” said Plato to TouringCarTimes. “I lost what should have been a pole lap on one of the red flags. It takes rear-wheel drive cars quite a lot of time to get any temperature (in the tyres), so you waste five laps just trying to get it up to speed, and then every time I tried to put a lap in there was traffic, or someone came out of the pits.

“I knew the lap was there, I just needed to get a run and it came on the last lap. I didn’t get any traffic except the two Hondas at the hairpin, whilst they moved offline they crept towards the apex a bit so I lost a bit of time there, but I’m still pleased I got the lap.”

Plato also vented against the driving standards of drivers near the back of the time sheets after the session.

“If you had 30 drivers like the top ten it wouldn’t be an issue,” he said. “It’s just the driving standards from the people at the back are just quite frankly…appalling.

“They shouldn’t be out there; they just haven’t got a clue, they just get in your way…(some of them) just shouldn’t be in the championship, and there’s quite a few of them. We’re out here trying doing a professional job and there’s people just wandering around. All the serious guys make every effort to get out of the way, and we can do it, so it’s frustrating, but nevertheless we managed to get the lap in.”