JASON PLATO: THE BTCC’S PANTOMIME VILLAN SPEAKS OUT
Tin-top legend answers MN readers’ questions
For two-and-a-half decades, Jason Plato has been right in the thick of the British Touring Car Championship, dividing opinion and mopping up the race wins. The Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra driver, who has been through some tough seasons recently, put himself back in the spotlight with a victory in the final round of the 2019 competition at Brands Hatch and he is fully fired up for the 2020 campaign.
He has made a decent living by racing in the BTCC and fronting Channel 5’s Fifth Gear road car programme, which has boosted his profile beyond that of any other driver on the grid. During the pitlane walkabouts at each event, his is still always the longest queue.
While he waits for the new season to come around at Donington Park on August 1-2, he took time out of his schedule to answer Motorsport News readers’ questions. as ever, he is searingly honest.
MN sets the scene: After success in Formula Renault, including winning the series’ first European title in 1991, Jason Plato’s single-seater career was on an upward trajectory. He didn’t have a lot of cash, but he knew that Formula 3 was the next step. Finance determined that he would drive for Van Diemen in its brand new single-seater. It would only last half a season before the money ran out, and it was Van Diemen’s only attempt at the category.
Question: “What was the Van Diemen Formula 3 car really like to drive:
[team boss] Ralph Firman has said it was the chassis he was most proud of?” Russell Scobbie
Via email
Jason Plato: “That car was a work of art. It was beautifully done. The tub was amazing. All of the front suspension installation was very trick for that time but, in my opinion, there was a fundamental flaw with the kinematics of the rear suspension. When the loads came up the rear pushrods and they came into the rocker arm, there was masses of stiction. If you look from the gearbox down the line of the car, the pushrods came up at, say, 30 degrees. How it then turned that 30-degree moment of thrust through to a longitudinal mechanism wasn’t great. It was all a bit wrong.
“You would be able to set the thing up on the flat patch – bear in mind set-up is critical in those types of car – and you could twist the back of the car and the corner weights would be all skewwhiff.
“There were bits where the car was great – the front end was amazing – but the rear was just a bit unpredictable. Being a freshman in Formula 3, it was just very difficult to drive and be consistent with.”
MN sets the scene: After the singleseater dream died, Plato scratched around for a deal. He ended up dominating the Renault Sport Spider series in 1996, which put him right under the nose of the Williams-run Renault British Touring Car Championship team. The championship was in the middle of a revolution in terms of the types of drivers who took part. It was no longer and old man’s game, and younger drivers were beginning to break through. Question: “Do you think you were a trailblazer for young drivers looking at the British Touring Car Championship as a career option?”
Malcolm Munt
Via email
JP: “I certainly went towards it but I didn’t share the view that it was full of a load of old blokes though. In years prior to me getting involved, arguably so. But when I really focused on it, there were drivers like Alain Menu, Jo Winkelhock, Frank Biela, Rickard Rydell, Gabriele Tarquini – mind you, Gabriele does fit the more senior driver bracket because although he is a delicious guy, he is about 700 years old!
“Just before Super Touring came, when Alfa Romeo brought that crazy homologation special out with that wing in the boot in 1994, the grid of drivers was unbelievable. Back in those days, Rydell was a real up-and-coming driver and the BTCC was his destination.”
MN: But you get drivers coming into touring car racing now who haven’t necessarily fallen off the single-seater ladder and then gone to the BTCC.
They have had it as a target from the very outset of their careers… maybe because of your success.
JP: “Yes, I guess that is true. That is what happened to me when my singleseater aspirations were over – which was quite quickly!”
Question: “If you could drive any
racing car through history what would it be and why?”
Greg Tomkins
Via Facebook
JP: “That’s a toughie! There are quite a few!”
MN: Give us your top three then…?
JP: “One, most certainly, would be the Ferrari 312T4 and the T5. The ones that Jody Scheckter and Gilles Villeneuve drove in 1979 and 1980 in grand prix racing. Whenever you see pictures of Villeneuve in that car, he is always sideways. It looked amazing. The reason I say that is I was about to start karting and I had a poster of Gilles on my bedroom wall and he was my hero. He was everything. That car has got a special place in my mind, even though it might not have been the greatest Formula 1 car of all time.
“Years ago, when I was working for Fifth Gear, I went down to test a Ferrari at Fiorano. I went into Enzo Ferrari’s flat at the circuit, all the behind the scenes stuff. I walked into Enzo’s little office and on his desk there was an open diary, a purple felt-tip pen which he was famous for writing with and one photograph of one driver and it is Gilles. How amazing is that?
“I am good friends with Scheckter, we see a lot of each other, and I am so close to convincing him to let me drive the 1979 world championship-winning 312T4 he has. That would be all my dreams come true. I have been working on it for about five years.
“Another car would be a Porsche 917 because of the original Le Mans movie with Steve Mcqueen, which is lush, although I am not sure I would be brave enough to drive it too fast.
“Another one would be the beautiful, which I have looked at in great detail because Frank Williams had one once, coke-bottle shaped Ferrari [the 1989-1990 640 and 641]. What a great-looking car. And also Red 5, the 1992 Williams FW14B.”
Question: “Which pre-super Touringera British Touring Car Championship car would Jason most liked to have driven competitively?” @huntbrothersf1
Via Twitter
JP: “That would have to be a Ford
Sierra RS500. It has got to be.”
MN: We always had you pegged as more of a Jaguar Mk2 guy with a twirling moustache…
JP: “Funnily enough, I used to work for Tom Walkinshaw Racing as a gofer when they were running the works Jaguar XJSS in European Touring Cars in the early 1980s. I used to help out there in the summer holidays. I used to make the tea, hang the pitboard out, anything really. I was there at Silverstone in 1984 when there was a massive shunt at Woodcote and Chuck Nicholson and just about everyone else went off in the wet. I have told this story to [then TWR XJS driver] Martin Brundle and he denied it, but this did happen: he came to the factory and he threw his car keys at me and said “wash my car”. He’s since said that he’d never have done something like that, but I didn’t feel bad about it because he was the hero back then. So maybe I would
have liked to have driven an XJS in the European championship.”
Question: “Out of the touring cars he’s ever raced which was the best?” @grewky
Via Twitter
JP: “The Renault Laguna in 1997. That was something else, that thing.”
MN: Because that was the first touring car you raced, though, you didn’t really have a reference point. You must have thought all touring cars were that good…
JP: “I thought all BTCC cars were maybe that good until the 1998 Renault Laguna came along and it wasn’t all that special! I remember my team-mate Alain Menu, very early on that year at Silverstone when we were on the drivers’ parade, putting his arm around me and saying “mate, we have got some machine here this year – this thing is the best I have driven in my life”. That always stuck with me. I knew the car was quick, but it took a while to realise just how good it was.”
MN: How come it took you until Snetterton in August in that season, your first in 1997, to win a race: after all, you had been on pole for the first three rounds of the campaign…
JP: “There was a bit learning. It took me a while to get good starts. And also, tyre management back then was crucial. Alain Menu could drive a race distance faster than me – he could drive laps that were just as fast, but he looked after his tyres. It took me a while to get my head around that. And let’s not forget, Alain was the best in the world back then and I was a puppy. It took a while. And also, after the first two events and sticking it on pole, I was walking around with my heels a bit high and my chest puffed out. I was probably having too much fun and not working hard enough.
“Alain started to beat me in qualifying and I was always playing catch up because he was leading the points. I couldn’t have a go at him [due to team orders], but I was fine with that.
“Snetterton was the first time really that we could fight together and it would make no difference if he came second, because he was so far ahead in the points. I felt confident enough to step up. Remember, even though my deal was a three-year deal, it was three one-year deals with options. I couldn’t f**k it up. I didn’t want to screw things for myself by being a twat.”
MN sets the scene: Jason Plato is known as a take-no-prisoners racer, and that has often brought him into conflict with others on-track. Among those ongoing rivalries is his battle with Team Dynamics driver Matt Neal, which almost came to blows at Rockingham in 2011.
Question: “Matt Neal spoke about the discussions about you joining Team Dynamics, could you have been
Matt’s team-mate?”
Barrie Anderson
Via Facebook
JP: “When were there discussions!?
What actually happened was Steve Neal, Matt’s dad who used to own the team, thought I had the keys to a factory Volvo deal in the British Touring Car Championship, which I actually did for a short time until things changed. Steve didn’t have a works deal at that time and consequently I became his mate again.
“I did hear a whisper that they did once contemplate me joining Matt in the team. Could I ever drive at Team Dynamics with Matt? I would find it very difficult because there is such a lot of stuff that has gone under the bridge between me and him. It would be very, very difficult.
“If it was me and someone else in the other car and not Matt, then possibly so. I might be able to make that work. Team Dynamics are very good operators and they understand if someone’s good, they are good, but nevertheless, when there is a family member in the driving seat, then it is very difficult. A better question would be ‘would I be happy for him to be my team-mate in any other team?’. And the answer would be yes: bring it on.”
Question: “If Jason could, where would he punch Matt Neal?” @Btccaddict
Via Twitter
JP: “Well I simply wouldn’t. I am a lover, not a fighter.”
Question: “You have had many hardfought battles through the years, who was the toughest opponent you ever raced against?”
Robert Medland
Via Facebook
JP: “There have been so many. Yvan Muller was hard, and slippery, and devious and political. He lied more than all the current government ministers put together. But he was a brilliant, and
I mean brilliant, driver but just hard work. Frank Biela was hard but fair, Alain Menu was hard but a brilliant driver, as was James Thompson. Even Matt Neal, when he is in the groove he can be a really tough opponent. Rickard Rydell was tough too.
“The one I enjoyed racing against the most though was Fabrizio Giovanardi. I had a really nice relationship with him. We knew exactly where we were with each other and I didn’t mind taking a little bit from him because I knew it was done professionally and there was a reason for it. Generally, it was just a little lean, like a can opener – it was just a nibble which made you think ‘ooo, you clever f**ker’. It was never a punt, it was a winkle. And he knew that I will give it back. He was great to race against, and I am very fond of Fabrizio.
“I did cross him, by sheer mistake, in the World Touring Car Championship round at Silverstone in 2005 when I came second to Rydell in the SEAT. I had a moment with Fabrizio and it was totally unintentional. I just caught him on the fast Becketts section. I was inside him, but I just let the car run wide a bit too much and I clattered him. It screwed him up because he had got on the marbles, and I didn’t want to do that. I got the look afterwards from him as if to say ‘I will remember that’. And he did get his own back.
“It was at Spa later that year. It was the race that determined the reversed grid, and I was sat in eighth which would have been pole later. He just f**king did it back to me: a little tap which pushed me wide and lost me places. On the slowing down lap we glanced at each other through the windows and I could just see the look in his eyes, which was saying
‘we are even now’. I was fine about that.”
Question: “Is there a team offer or drive that Jason didn’t take up or missed out on, that looking back with hindsight, he wished he had?”
@Rpgilb
Via Twitter
JP: “Yes, there is actually. In Formula Renault UK in 1991, both me and [rival] Bobby Verdon-roe had a big prize indemnity for winning the series, and it was a rough season. If I won the championship, that would have given me the budget for Formula 3 in 1992 and I had a deal agreed with Paul Stewart Racing. My indemnity was worth £250,000: I was going to PSR, boom.
It all went wrong [Verdon-roe won the Formula Renault title] and that was it.
“Beneath all of that, we really didn’t have a pot to piss in. I might have had about £50,000 in total. All the F3 seats were filling up. I knew what was going on with the new Van Diemen F3 project because I had been a works Van Diemen driver in Formula Renault. There were two F3 seats left: Fortec, which was a relatively unknown F3 team at that point, and the Van Diemen drive.
“I knew that Kelvin Burt had a little bit more money than I did. I got a tip off that Kelvin was after the Van Diemen drive because, on paper, that looked like it was going to be the better seat. I woke up one morning and decided I was going to go and get [Van Diemen boss] Ralph [Firman] out of bed. I went to his house and I knocked on his door on 0530hrs.
His wife Angie came down and asked me what I was doing at that time of day, but I told her I had to speak to Ralph. In I went, I sat in the kitchen and Ralph came down in a dressing down with a fag on, and I told him I wanted the F3 drive. I didn’t have the full budget, nowhere near, but I told him I would find the rest of it. I left with the drive in my pocket.
“Kelvin then went and did the deal with Fortec and that was a good thing for him [he finished third in the standings with two wins and went on to win the title in 1993]…and I lost my drive halfway through the year because I didn’t have enough budget.”
Question: “Does working in TV on Fifth Gear benefit your racing skills in any way? And equally does it cause you any issues?”
Luke Barry
Via Facebook
JP: “I think it does benefit my racing
skills. Remember 2009 when Jonny Adam clouted the back of my Chevrolet at the top of Paddock Hill Bend at Brands Hatch at the opening meeting of the season? I had what can only be described as an accident [Plato’s car was fully sideways for the whole of Paddock Hill Bend and he performed a stunning save]. I put the fact that I was able to rescue the job down to all the telly driving and hooning around. A lot of credit also has to go to [co-host] Tiff Needell, because I learned a lot of things from him. The save that day at Brands wasn’t a motor racing reaction, that was a telly driving reaction that just kicked in.
“You never get cars sideways like that on a race track, but you do when you are f**king around in front of a camera. It has helped, because I am not spooked by going backwards in a front-wheel-drive car through a corner. It is now fun for me.”
Question: “Who’s the most talented person he’s seen in a road car on
Fifth Gear or otherwise?” @Tedclarke777
Via Twitter
JP: “Tiff Needell, honest to God. I am f**king good at doing telly driving and performing to a camera and hanging it right out next to the cameraman and keeping everyone alive. But Tiff is different gravy, he is a genius. He is a bit unorthodox: his hands are everywhere and he lets go of the steering wheel and lets it spin in his hands. I don’t, I always walk the wheel and keep my hands on it.
“We are the only show on TV that does this because we have got proper drivers, but Tiff can position a cameraman like I would but he will be a lot braver than me. He will position a camera and go hooning into a corner at 100mph in a Ferrari 458 or something and he will be literally on the lockstops and he will miss the cameraman by an inch. Unbelievable.
“He is unhinged though, and I have punched him in the face more than one occasion as I have been a passenger and he has been mucking around. I hate being a passenger. I don’t like it, and he knows that and he plays up to it.”
Question: “You open your garage and you can only have three road cars in there. What are they?”
Jack Crowther
Via email
JP: “Nice question Jack! One would be practical, it would be a tank where I can chuck everything into it – the kids the luggage, the dogs, everything. Something like a Range Rover or a Porsche Cayenne. It would have to have a turbo and a V8: a wagon with a bit of grunt.
“One would most definitely be the original Gordon Murray-designed Mclaren F1 GTR. Me sat in the middle with my two girls either side – does life get any better? That would be something for special occasions. I would also want a Mercedes-benz 300SL roadster for when I have just had my hair done and I am feeling a bit handsome.
“Can I have one more? It would be the car I have just sold, ironically: a Porsche 911 Turbo S Exclusive Series. It is an everyday car, but goodness me it is fast. That would be my daily drive.”
MN sets the scene: Jason Plato joined BMR Racing in 2015 and it introduced the Subaru Levorg in 2016. After showing good pace initially, the 2017 and 2018 seasons were a struggle, with only one win. It was a perplexing drop-off in form from a man who had been in the top three of the championship from 2006 through to 2015.
Question: “What really went on at BMR Racing in those final couple of seasons? By the way, it is great to see him back at the front for Power Maxed Racing!” @Darrentimms
Via Twitter
JP: “I really can’t talk about it. I don’t want to, because it was a very dark period of my life. I feel really had over actually. I brought a lot to that table and to have it all mucked up and to be had over so badly was just not nice. I nearly pulled the pin on everything and stopped racing altogether. I have never been uncompetitive in my life ever and I was at the back of the field and yet my team-mate in ‘the same car’ was at the front. I was being shafted. As time went on, I know why, and I can’t talk about that because it is litigious. There are still things going on.
“It was terrible and I was a nightmare to live with and I hated everybody and the world. I am not saying I am special, but I have given everything I have had in life to go racing. It was sad and nasty, but the perverse thing about it is that in many ways, I am quite pleased I have had that moment and I learned a lot about myself because of it.
“Go back to 1997 when I began in the championship, I have had a very good run and I have always put things together and been able to bring new manufacturers to the grid. Whatever car I have jumped into I have turned it around and I have always won races and had a spring in my step – so much so that I didn’t give a f**k about anybody because all was right in my world. That is selfish, but good racing drivers are. But the BMR Racing experience broke me and it is probably fair to say that some of the lack of pace I went through was because I was in such a terrible place with it all. I knew I would turn up and my car would be crap, but I couldn’t do anything about it. And
I can’t [am not allowed to] tell you why, even now.
“I just woke up one day and I knew
I had to get out of that situation. I got the show on the road again [by pulling together a deal with Power Maxed Racing], and I managed to pull it off and it has been great: we won the last race last year. In the second half of the year, we were generally pretty competitive.
“Also, the other thing which perhaps people don’t understand but it was pretty valid to me at the time I was at BMR was that I had turned 50 when this all happened. I have a big profile on social media and I was getting it from everywhere. People were saying I was just too old, and I knew it wasn’t down to that.
“So that gave me the energy to go back out there I felt I had to go and prove people wrong. I am so pleased I didn’t pull the pin, because I learned a hell of a lot about myself.”
MN: Did it mean that the winning feeling was still strong in you?
JP: “That’s not strictly true. It is not about the winning feeling, it is when you don’t have a chance to win that it really kicks you. There is no point then. If I am not in the race and not competitive, then there is no point, but I knew I could be and if I had the right kit, then I would be. Of course, the world doesn’t work like that. People were just saying ‘well, you are getting old now and a young lad [team-mate Ashley Sutton] has come along and kicked your arse’. Honest to God, that last win at Brands Hatch last year was great and I was back with a team where I knew a lot of the people in the team and I trusted them. When they say something is an ‘eight’, it is an ‘eight’, it is not an ‘11’.
“That is one of the things I am most proud of: when the chips were down, I managed to turn it all around.”
MN sets the scene: Jason Plato and his backer Tesco brought its energy drink brand KX into the championship in
2012 and it devised a young driver support programme to assist up-andcoming talent.
Question: “Hi Jason, during the KX Akademy, you had Tom Ingram under your wing: do you get any satisfaction, from how he’s grown as a driver and from his commercial ability to bring in the sponsors?”
Matthew Kirby
Via Facebook
JP: “Absolutely. Tom was our first, for want of a better word, darling. He is a very, very good racing driver and I will never forget the race we had at Rockingham in 2015. I got him and he got me back and we kept swapping. I love it – he finished second, so I loved that even more!”
MN: You are very involved with the
British Racing Drivers’ Club too, as a director and you have an input into the Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Award to find the next young talents?
JP: “I love working with the young drivers and I am proud to be a longstanding judge. I have seen some of the young drivers and debated them and helped pick the winners. We have seen some really mega drivers and to be on the inside of that is really special.” MN: Do any of the young drivers come and knock on your door for advice?
JP: “It has happened a few times, and it is mainly commercial stuff, which I am more than happy to give.”
Question: “Racing is still very much your motivation, but with your commercial knowledge and experience with an academy set-up, would you ever consider running a motorsport team as team principal and if so, which series would you enter and who would your drivers be?”
Daniel Kerr
Via Facebook
JP: “I certainly know I could do the team management job, because I know how things need to work and I am very aware of what goes on in the judicial hearings too… and that is a key part. That and the politics and everyone pulling in the right direction, I am good at. I am not sure I would want to own a team, and I certainly wouldn’t want to own one with my own brass. I would be up for owning one with someone else’s brass, but I wouldn’t want to sink my own hard-earned into a racing team. But I can see myself being a principal.
“I think I would be quite good at running the whole BTCC show, the whole game. Doing an Alan Gow role, I could cope with that. I am commercially astute, I understand image and marketing. I don’t suffer fools, and nor does Alan! Maybe that would be the role for me. I am not very good at committees, and that’s not how it should be run. I’d like to be able to say ‘this is my train set, and if you don’t like it, f**k off’!”