How the return of one of UK racing’s biggest names looks set to shake up the BTCC

“The team is designed and set up to disrupt – we are going to disrupt the British Touring Car Championship because we have to. I’ve grown up watching this championship, I fell in love with it when I was 14, and I believe it needs a kick up the arse. We’ve got fantastic drivers, fantastic teams, and it just needs a bit of magic. Jason will bring that.” 

Now that’s a mission statement and a half from Dan Rowbottom of the newly formed Plato Racing team, set to make its debut at April’s Donington Park BTCC opener. The no-longer-bearded Midlander – just light stubble now – is partner in an operation named after his pal: two-time BTCC champion and series wins record holder Jason Plato. Two Mercedes-AMG A35 Saloons will be fielded; one for ‘Rowbo’, one for Adam Morgan – fifth and sixth respectively in the 2025 points.

“I’m in charge of HR – it’s a minefield!” exclaims Plato, and the mind boggles about this revelation from a guy who always stressed that he never wanted to set up a team. “I don’t sugarcoat anything, and that’s got me into lots of hot water before. But I’m ultimately a really fair bloke. I demand excellence and, if that’s not given through lack of effort, I go apeshit. But that’s not going to happen because everyone’s bought into it. They all know they’re in on the birth of something really amazing.”

We’re talking at the Plato Racing launch, where numerous dignitaries and BTCC faces past and present are assembled. Among them is Plato’s friend Ross Brawn, whom he credits with doing so much to pull him out of his post-racing-career depression. 

And then there’s RML… Touring car leviathan; supplier of spec subframe, suspension and steering systems to the BTCC; 1990s titles won as factory Vauxhall and Nissan team; and which guided Plato to his second crown, in 2010, with a Chevrolet Cruze. The Wellingborough company has designed JP’s Mercedes weapons and, last September, Plato’s team took the lease on an RML ‘storage base’ – Unit 2 – just across the driveway. “I won my last championship from Bay 4 here,” Plato enthuses, “and took the SEAT deal here [in 2004].” 

But this is a ‘hell-freezes-over’ moment. Plato’s fallout over 2011-12 with RML founder Ray Mallock is well documented. “I did bump into Ray in the toilets at the British Racing Drivers’ Club awards and he wanted to knock my brains out,” Plato chuckles sheepishly. “It didn’t take long for us to iron it out. I respect these people enormously – they’re the best in the business at designing cars and the engineering that they do.”

The new BTCC squad’s ‘head of HR’ Plato with Morgan (left) and Rowbottom (right)

Photo by: Plato Racing Team RML

The first task was drying out the initial shell – from a water-damaged road car bought for £7000 in early October. Then RML scanned the A35 during its stages of disassembly to create CAD models that couldn’t be acquired from Mercedes itself. It wasn’t until the new year that Plato Racing had anything identifiable as a race car. The result? “The output is f***ing extraordinary, and the design is beautiful,” raves Plato. “It’s a work of art.”

“The technology that we’ve had access to is unbelievable,” stresses Rowbottom. “I saw it through every single version in digital form in design. We’ve got proper crash structures, we’ve innovated in terms of driver safety – we’ve got a proper cell we sit in to protect our legs. We’ve employed a really well-known automotive body stylist.

“Once we’ve done all the aero, we’ve then made the bodywork look like a Mercedes with the aero that we wanted in it. So it looks like an OEM-built product. Touring cars over the past 10 years all look the same, right? Massive wide arches, everything square. We’ve got a really pretty car.”

“There’s been a sizeable delta in what a staff budget would be from when we started looking around at the end of last year, because Cadillac F1 have blown the market by recruiting 650 people – they’re paying some people double what they’re worth" Jason Plato

On the staffing side, the team has recruited been-there-seen-it-all veteran team manager Malcolm Swetnam who, like Rowbottom, has crossed over from Alliance Racing. He’d already handed in his notice, intending to live in Australia, yet two days later came the call from Plato…

Paul Ridgway, Rowbottom’s engineer since mid-2024 at Alliance, is on board as technical chief. Yet another Alliance old boy, number-one mechanic Dave Kelly, has jumped ship but in a non-race-weekend crew-chief role. Tom Hunt, who looked after ‘Rowbo’ at Team Dynamics in 2022 and ran Dan Lloyd to the Independents’ crown with Restart Racing last season, will engineer Morgan.

As far as the bulk are concerned, Plato makes an interesting point on the labour market: “There’s been a sizeable delta in what a staff budget would be from when we started looking around at the end of last year, because Cadillac F1 have blown the market by recruiting 650 people – they’re paying some people double what they’re worth!” 

Alliance did a “fantastic job”, reckons Rowbottom, but he needed to be in a position to pitch for a title

Photo by: JEP

Plato admits “it’s not operating efficiently in terms of spend at the moment, but that will change once we get more money in the door”. In this context, the important aspect is 37-year-old Rowbottom’s ongoing long-term backing from Cataclean: “They’re very involved with the project. They’re really behind me and want to see the next stage of my career, which is challenge for the title.

“Alliance Racing did a fantastic job for me. But it was clear to me that there wasn’t a requirement for me to do any more than I was doing. They have drivers who can challenge for the championship [Ash Sutton and Dan Cammish], which is fine, but you get to a point where you’ve got to move on. I’m getting older, I want to challenge for a championship before I retire, and the response I got back was ‘we’re quite happy with where you are’. Which is not really for me.”

Like Rowbottom, Morgan is coming off his most successful season in terms of championship position after spending 2025 with the Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai squad. “We had an offer on the table – it was either going to be Excelr8 or finish,” he recounts. “I got a phone call from Dan, and he said, ‘Look, I don’t know what your plans are for next year. If you’ve not signed anything, come down, take a look around.’

“Me and my dad came down, had a tour with Jason and were just blown away. From the minute we got here, seeing all the guys at RML, all the design work, all the investment, infrastructure – we were just like, ‘This is an opportunity that we can’t miss’. With it being a Mercedes, it’s linked to our family business Ciceley Commercials [the Morgans’ Mercedes HGV dealership] – it just made so much sense for us.

“Commercially, this is what tipped it over the edge. The Hyundai is a championship winner. To leave that and come to a brand-new team is quite a big step. But knowing what these guys have done, the personnel they’ve employed to run these cars and design them, we took a leap of faith. I genuinely believe this car is going to be at the front from round one.”

Morgan and Rowbottom have known each other since they were kids. “They’re a good family,” nods Rowbottom. “We met the Morgans in 1998 at a pissing-down Larkhall kart track. It’s really nice for my family as well. Like friends going racing, but with Jason at the helm, which is dangerous…” 

Morgan and Rowbottom (here at Knockhill last year) have known each other since childhood

Photo by: JEP

They were also team-mates in 2019, when BTCC rookie Rowbottom drove the second car from the Morgans’ Ciceley Motorsport Mercedes A-Class stable. Alongside those Plato Racing disruptors, in many ways Morgan is the ideal foil: the amiable Lancastrian is quick, and one of the nicest blokes you’ll meet in the BTCC paddock.

“I’ll leave Jason and Dan to ruffle the feathers!” he grins. “I’ll just sit behind, take the points, take the wins.”

Coincidentally, it was Ridgway who designed the old A-Class for Ciceley before the 2014 season. Comparing it to RML’s work on the A35, Morgan declares it’s “chalk and cheese. A huge amount of technological advances with CFD and CAD. We just did it with little drawings on fag packets like the old days. This car is special – it’s almost too nice to race. Put a cover on and leave it."

“We were invited up to M-Sport’s facility and I walked through the door and I was like, no way these guys can’t build an engine that can win a championship” Dan Rowbottom

Under the bonnet is the customer TOCA engine built by M-Sport, despite RML’s renown in this area. “But we only had four months, remember,” points out Rowbottom. “Very kindly we were invited up to M-Sport’s facility and I walked through the door and I was like, no way these guys can’t build an engine that can win a championship.”

For a project which, says Rowbottom, only seeded “over a beer in July”, the feathers are truly being ruffled. Sniping? “We’ve had people seen in the car park taking photos when the workshop’s been open, all sorts of stuff,” laughs Plato. “That’s part of the game.

“I have to respect the business, it’s not just about me anymore. Regardless of what any driver tells you, they don’t give a stuff about anyone except themselves. It’s a really selfish, narcissistic game. That’s ingrained in me because I’ve been doing it all my life, but I can’t be like that now. I have to think about things differently. But I’m still going to be out there having a go.”

The pin has been pulled. Please stand at a safe distance.

Rowbottom cites “unbelievable” level of technology used to create “really pretty” Mercedes racer

Alliance Racing's new look

Amid the hullabaloo over the entry of Plato Racing, there’s been a lot of work going on at an established championship-winning team to build a new car for 2026. Except it’s not a completely new car.

Ever since Pete Osborne’s takeover of Motorbase Performance before the 2021 season, through its new-for-2022 title sponsorship from NAPA Racing UK to its change in identity in late 2023 to Alliance Racing, there had been moves afoot to switch from the fourth-generation Ford Focus ST hatchback to a saloon. Now it has, in the form of the Focus Titanium.

Most notably this was on the cards in late 2022, when the desire was a rear-wheel-drive car to reflect the success achieved together with the Infiniti Q50 by Ash Sutton and engineer Antonio Carrozza in their days at BMR Racing.

Instead, Carrozza was tasked at the last minute with a complete revamp of the Focus ST for 2023: cue a season of domination but, since then, a gradual decline in competitiveness (albeit not enough to prevent Sutton finishing third in 2024 and runner-up last year), largely thanks to the hatch’s aerodynamic inefficiency.

“The saloon’s been the way we’ve been looking to go for the past four years,” explains Carrozza. “At the end of 2021, I was well under way with the design of the Jaguar XE. That all fell to pieces [when BMR folded].

Carrozza has been looking at a switch to the saloon bodyshape for years

Photo by: JEP

“After I started at Motorbase, at the end of 2022 we were trying to do the Audi saloon project; when that didn’t work we were looking at a Mercedes project. They didn’t come off, so we were chipping away at the Focus.”

As a hugely successful businessman in the logistics industry, Osborne has brought his commercial savvy to British Touring Cars – his liaison with NAPA and others is testament to that. But his sweet-talking of MG in 2025 to bring the manufacturer back to the series did not bear fruit.

The marque’s UK branch was keen, but it appears that no one at its Chinese holding company SAIC felt empowered to make the decision. With new BTCC regulations for 2027 allowing in models not on sale in the UK, the Focus saloon was identified, and a vote put by series organiser TOCA to the teams resulted in Alliance being given dispensation to run the model one year early.

Carrozza describes the project as “essentially cut-and-shut – it’s the same as Dynamics with the Honda in 2014 [when that team switched to the Civic Tourer]. We’ve just reshelled the rear of the car. The actual rollcage is identical. We haven’t built complete new cars – it’s a modification of the existing car.”

The other new car in 2026 is, of course, Power Maxed Racing’s Audi A3. “I think that car’s going to be really good,” predicts Carrozza. “They’ve got a better handle on the front-wheel-drive car than they probably have credit for. The Vauxhall Astra was really good, so I think now that they’ve got a more aerodynamic shape, probably with a bit better downforce balance, that car will be one to watch out for.”

This article is one of many in the monthly Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the May 2026 issue and subscribe today. 

Focus saloon – a model that’s not for sale in the UK – is a “cut-and-shut” modification of the existing racer

Photo by: JEP