Plato gives Cruze first BTCC win

His 54th career BTCC win, which came by a little over half a second, was also the first in the championship for the Chevrolet Cruze and helped him extend his series lead to 20 points.

Plato made a cracking start from the second row and jumped ahead of the Hondas of Matt Neal and Gordon Shedden before the first corner.

He subsequently proceeded to pull out a 3.5-second lead over Steven Kane, the Motorbase BMW driver having also made a great getaway.

Kane then outbraked himself at the Deene hairpin, allowing Collard through into second, and with the BMWs hanging on to their tyres better than Plato's Cruze, both WSR driver Collard and Kane began to close in on the 2001 champion during the latter stages of the race.

Collard went through the final corners just inches behind the bootlid of Plato's car, but his exit from the Brook chicane was just short of what he needed to pass his rival. Second still represented WSR's best finish of the season.

Andrew Jordan had looked good for a podium finish, but the Eurotech Vauxhall driver was passed by both Collard and the Motorbase car of Mat Jackson on successive laps around the halfway point. His fifth place, however, was still his best of 2010 so far.

Behind him Matt Neal hung on to sixth for most of the race, but eventually had to give best to the Arena Fords of Tom Chilton and Tom Onslow-Cole, both of whom exploited their superior straightline speed advantage to pass him on lap 15.

Paul O'Neill also moved his Tech-Speed Honda ahead of Neal's works machine by the flag to seal eighth.

The final point went to James Nash, but not before the Triple 8 driver had collided with Tom Boardman at Deene with two laps to go - an incident that resulted in the Special Tuning UK SEAT ending up in the tyre wall.

Pos  Driver           Car            Time/Gap
 1.  Jason Plato      Chevrolet    23m06.392s
 2.  Rob Collard      BMW            + 0.490s
 3.  Steven Kane      BMW            + 1.913s
 4.  Mat Jackson      BMW            + 3.433s
 5.  Andrew Jordan    Vauxhall      + 15.363s
 6.  Tom Chilton      Ford          + 18.125s
 7.  Tom Onslow-Cole  Ford          + 21.134s
 8.  Paul O'Neill     Honda         + 21.405s
 9.  Matt Neal        Honda         + 23.830s
10.  James Nash       Vauxhall      + 31.639s
11.  Andy Neate       BMW           + 33.301s
12.  Alex MacDowall   Chevrolet     + 34.277s
13.  Gordon Shedden   Honda         + 36.337s
14.  Matt Hamilton    Honda         + 40.473s
15.  Martin Johnson   Vauxhall      + 46.792s
16.  David Pinkney    Vauxhall      + 56.410s
17.  Arthur Forster   BMW         + 1m03.622s

Retirements:

     Tom Boardman     SEAT        14 laps
     John George      Honda       10 laps
     Shaun Hollamby   Volkswagen  0 laps