How Plato's BTCC return swept the Silverstone paddock

He may be knocking on the door of his 58th birthday, but Jason Plato still cuts an impish, sprightly figure.

Not that it’s always been that way over the past three years, since the British Touring Car Championship’s wins record holder hung up his helmet after the final round of the 2022 season. Plato has been through dark days, barely leaving the house over a period of several months. Wellwishers were concerned, and it is the kindness and motivation of some of them that has helped lead him to last Sunday’s Silverstone BTCC round.

He's fizzing with energy. Plato’s sartorial ensemble of a purple jacket-and-shoes combo mixed with a spectacularly psychedelic shirt make you wonder whether he’s stepped through a portal from a hip 1960s Carnaby Street boutique into the Silverstone paddock, stubbing out a cigarette as he walks into the BRDC Clubhouse with a gang of media. They seek him here, they seek him there. His clothes are loud, but never square.

The kinks in his life have been manyfold. Plato struggled to navigate the end of his career; the collapse of his marriage; the termination of his presentation of the Fifth Gear TV show; his investments going, in his words, “tits up”. All that within the space of a few weeks.

“It hurt a lot – it [racing] was my identity,” he explains. “For the last 30 years I’d been me, but also me as the bloke I project. I was always on show. It’s been three hard, dreadful years. I didn’t know who I was anymore.”

But now he does – as team owner of Jason Plato Motorsport, due to enter the BTCC in 2026. And he’s going for it in a big way, not that he can divulge any of the details until, he estimates, things begin to be drip-fed a couple of weeks after the final round of this year’s series. So, mid to late October then.

“From the floor upwards we will have the best in the business,” he declares. The contracts with a key title sponsor are “with the lawyers. All of our partners will be proper brands, like, big boys.” It will make or break him, so he’s got to buy the best.

Plato only told media the bare minimum about his 2026 project at Silverstone

Photo by: JEP

This is a great thing for the BTCC. Plato eschews the usual personality diagnoses in describing himself as “an HFFC – High Functioning Fruit Cake”. His BTCC wins record of 97 is accompanied by just two championship titles, but he did so much more for the profile of the series. The earnest, keen-to-please up-and-comer of the early-to-mid 1990s became the motorsport embodiment of post-Britpop lad culture once he became established. Rivalries were many, and provided a wealth of juicy news stories.

The last big Plato war was, of course, with three-time champion Matt Neal. From the scuffle in the Rockingham pitlane to numerous on-track incidents, they projected a healthy hatred for each other. But Neal was one of those who did so much for Plato during his dark days, the lanky Brummie visiting his home to try to pull him out of his spiral.

While the etiquette of racing at the front of the BTCC is way higher than it was in the crash-bang-wallop days of the 2000s and 2010s, there are some (not including this writer) who bemoan that the leading protagonists are just too squeaky-clean to attract the interest of the Plato/Neal days. Tom Ingram – who it should be remembered was a Plato protege while on the KX Akademy, and describes his old mentor as an inspiration behind learning how to market himself – can’t pretend to be anything but a very nice, eloquent character in the mould of Tom from The Good Life. Ash Sutton can be hard as nails on track, but tends to shrug things off as “it is what it is” out of the car. Jake Hill can fire off the odd bit of verbal, but he’s still not yet made the Premier League of BTCC headline fodder.

Plato will mix things up, but who is he going to do it with? “I can’t tell you who with, what manufacturer, what car, who the drivers are, who the team personnel are,” he states. “But we’re doing it properly.”

"The championship needs a little bit of a boost again from different teams, so I wish him well. Jason’s free to contact me any time he wants. But I’m very happy with where I am" Jake Hill

But, of course, the rumour mill was buzzing at Silverstone, and this is what appears to be on the grapevine…

First, top motorsport engineering company RML was the subject of much gossip, and it wasn’t people talking about the spec subframes and suspension it supplies to the BTCC grid. This was an eyebrow raiser. Plato won the 2010 championship title with an RML-run Chevrolet Cruze, but his project for 2012, when he jumped ship to team up with Triple Eight and MG, did not overly impress RML founder Ray Mallock. But bridges can be mended, and the money is on RML building the cars for an official entry from Mercedes, a marque that has not been represented on the BTCC grid since Adam Morgan’s family Ciceley Motorsport team pensioned off its Independent A-Class machinery at the end of 2020.

Mallock’s son Michael, latterly an RML director and a key player on the company’s commercial side, is keeping his cards close to his chest. “I know what he’s up to, and it’s good to see his announcement,” he offers. “We support lots of people with lots of stuff and supply parts for the BTCC, so we would obviously be supplying that team. As for anything else, I don’t know…”

Could Mercedes return to the BTCC?

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Now for drivers. During Plato’s media gathering, he is highly critical of the commercial skills (or lack of them) of the majority of teams on the BTCC grid. In this sense, he seems to be on exactly the same wavelength as a guy who is heavily linked with the Jason Plato Motorsport project: Dan Rowbottom.

The Midlander, currently fifth in the championship in his third year with the Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus operation, is heavily sponsored by Cataclean, a company that fits perfectly into Plato’s blueprint for his new project.

“I don’t know,” grins Rowbottom in the Silverstone paddock, “but I’ve had 30,000 people ask me the same question. Me and JP are really close – we do some TV stuff together (The Scenic Route). I know he’s been planning something – he’s had a hard three years so good luck to him, but at the moment I am where I am. I’ve still got a year’s contract with NAPA so it’s all irrelevant.” But he’s still grinning as he wanders off…

The other name to reach Autosport ears at Silverstone is that of 2024 champion Jake Hill, whose management by Mark Blundell’s MB Motorsport has been commercially successful and arguably ticks the Plato boxes in that sense – as well as on-track prowess. This is more of a long shot, but Hill would fit JP’s prediction that “there will be people out there who are really upset” with who is recruited. But so, admittedly, would be any of the other top-liners…

“That’s interesting!” exclaims Hill. “I really love the rumour mill. That’s great. I have not had any conversations as of yet with JP, but it’s fantastic to see him doing that, creating another team that’s going to come into the championship. The championship needs a little bit of a boost again from different teams, so I wish him well. Jason’s free to contact me any time he wants. But I’m very happy with where I am, and the team around me [West Surrey Racing] have done a fantastic job in recouping the speed [of the BMW, which struggled in the first half of the season]. So we’ve just got to look forward to the future now.”

Of course, the Plato team’s entry depends upon the acquisition of two of the TOCA TBL entrants’ licences, with TOCA chief Alan Gow confirming to this writer that he would not be expanding beyond the current 24. So that will require, in all likelihood, one of the teams from the 2025 grid to pull the plug for next season, or a downscaling of one or two of them.

To be fair, one or other scenario looks reasonably likely. So that should, if all goes to plan, lead to a return of Plato to the paddock. And that’s not just terrific for the BTCC, but also as a catharsis for the man himself – and, hopefully, for other men who have gone through struggles. It’s a subject that’s not talked about often enough, particularly by men…

“Mental health is a big issue,” asserts Plato. “I’m not embarrassed or ashamed about it; I’m proud to have come out of it. I’m up at five o’clock in the morning now revving to go. That’s the old JP.”

It’s great to have the old fella back in the BTCC paddock at Silverstone – and hopefully for 2026 and beyond. And if you’re wondering about those lines in italics, then one thing’s for sure: Jason Plato is a dedicated follower only of his own fashion, because there isn’t another like him.

Plato is a BTCC legend with a CV stretching back to the 1990s. Here he partners Yvan Muller at Vauxhall in 2001

Photo by: JEP