Can the BTCC fill a Plato/Neal void?

The two stalwarts of the British Touring Car Championship, Matt Neal and Jason Plato, will both have momentous staging points in their own careers to reflect on this season.

Neal will hit 600 races in the second encounter at Silverstone at the weekend, while Plato has already smashed through his own 500 races barrier and achieved it in style with a victory, his first for the Team BMR Subaru Levorg GT, at Knockhill back in August.

The two most experienced men in the paddock are also the two biggest names in the show, mainly down to a fierce rivalry between the pair that has had several flashpoints over the last two decades.

Since the introduction of the single-class BTCC back in 1991, it has always thrived on head-to-head battles. From John Cleland and Steve Soper (cue the former's legendary phrase when describing Soper: "the man's an animal") through to Plato and Vauxhall team-mate Yvan Muller, the series has always been used to two-man dogfights.

Plato and Neal first shared the track in the British Touring Car Championship in 1997 when Plato was catapulted in to the works Renault team driving a Laguna, while Neal spent a long time thriving in the independents field with the family-run Team Dynamics.

That meant the two didn't really go toe-to-toe until the BTC regulations kicked in during the early 2000s. Perhaps the moment it really sparked into life was in 2004, when Plato returned from a tough dalliance with the ill-fated ASCAR category.

Plato returned in a blaze of publicity with SEAT. Initially, his sights weren't on the orange Honda Civics running Neal and Dan Eaves. Instead, they were on his nemesis and his former arch-rival Muller, still with Vauxhall.

When Plato returned in 2004, the prospects of another Muller v Plato battle set tongues wagging. Plato knew it too. At the pre-season media day at Donington Park, cars from each entrant were asked to trawl around slowly behind a camera car so head-on shots could be taken.

During the session, conducted at no more than 30mph, Plato veered from the left of the track and into the side of Muller. Afterwards, I asked him why.

"You [the media] all want it to kick off between Yvan and I, don't you? I was just doing what you wanted - and I know, full well, that you guys will use that photo on your front pages. It's all good for SEAT, hey?" Plato was right, Motorsport News did use the shot.

At the same time as Muller disappeared off into the World Touring Car Championship after 2005, the fight between Plato and Neal, who was then in the Integra, really intensified.

It publicly sparked into life at Knockhill, where after a clash between the pair, Neal described Plato as a "pig". There have been too many shunts to recall here, including Plato describing Neal's style of competition as "council-house racing" after a shunt at Snetterton a few years later.

Even back in 2011, the two squared up to each other physically in the pit lane at Rockingham after a fracas in qualifying.

There is no question that the drivers don't get on with each other. A lot of people speculate that the friction between the two is purely show business, just a bit of box office for the television audience, but they are wrong.

As Neal puts it: "I would say that five per cent of what we do between us is pantomime, and the rest is pure animosity."

Plato counters: "We don't get on. I don't trust his dad Steve and I don't trust his team, Team Dynamics - and I am pretty sure they don't trust me either."

So it is this thinly veiled disrespect for each other that has kept them both in the headlines over the course of their 500- and 600-race careers in the top flight of tin-top racing in the UK.

And it is something that the fans are going to sorely miss when either one of them decides to hang up their helmets.

There haven't been any major recent clashes and, although other names have come to the fore (it has been five years since either won a title), there is always a sharp intake of breath from the spectator banks when the pair get together on track.

And it is this irresistible connection that the BTCC will be without when they are no longer on the grid.

The newer breed of BTCC driver is fast, savvy and probably too aware to get drawn into any tit-for-tat verbal spats with rivals, but those are the kinds of battles that the TV and trackside audience love.

Hardcore media training didn't really exist when Plato and Neal were making their way up through the ranks and the rivalry is all the better for that.

Double champion Gordon Shedden is switched on and very good at the corporate game, while Colin Turkington, also a two-time winner, is probably one of the nicest blokes you could wish to meet in the paddock.

Even when Turkington and Plato had a big falling out this year about a misunderstood team order, which cost them both a win, all the Northern Irishman could utter was "that wasn't part of the plan". It was dignified, as you would expect from him, but it was hardly fireworks.

The BTCC needs its characters, and there are some out there. Andrew Jordan has plenty to say but hasn't had the big results recently to give him the sounding board to put them out there, while 23-year-old Tom Ingram also has a good selection of one-liners.

But isn't just about the humour, it is about having the sharp tongue when the results are there consistently too. One without the other, it either makes a driver a clown if they aren't winning or it makes them characterless if they are winning but without any personality.

The British Touring Car Championship, and its hundreds of thousands of fans, demand both.

Perhaps one of the most likely to succeed in this environment is up-and-comer Ash Sutton, who has won a race in his maiden season with MG and is showing all the signs of being one of the brightest of the new wave of talent.

He is a personable guy too and if his career can continue to maintain its upward momentum, then the future could be here.

Other characters will emerge to fill the void when the Big Two do finally decide to call it a day but it is unlikely that there will ever be the ferocity of the fights that Plato and Neal endured.

That is something that fans, no matter which side of the Plato and Neal debate they sit at the moment, will lament.