Could not agree more. Regular viewer and like most, a real Plato fan.
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I'm a a bit of a Plato fan, at least of his driving, too. He can come over as a bit pompous in interviews and his pre-race in-car ruminations are often embarrassing but when he gets out on the track his driving skills mitigate all that. He does push the legal move envelope some times but that is all part of the game, knowing what you can get away with and he usually judges that very well.
Not a fan of Gordon Shedden but that last race on Sunday showed what a good driver he is. I do have more time for Matt Neal though, Plato's "nemesis", he has great overtaking ability and can do that late braking, quick switch to the inside overtake better and more successfully than any other driver.
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Yeah that was great finale the BTCC season. Great drive from Shedden in the last race. Plato must have thought he could secure the title as he went into race three.
I'm not really a fan of Plato or Neal as they are both quite dirty drivers happy to "tap" other cars off the road.
Hopefully next season will retain most of the current line up and the new control parts are improving the steering so that may help less experienced drivers. You could argue to current grid is too large but it is a sign of a healthy formula.
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Here 4 years later and basically repeating a lot of what was said back then.
Fantastic end of season BTCC final meet at Brands Hatch. Watched in on ITV4 and it was the best set of three races this season and the final one extraordinarily good and exciting. Colin Turkington bundled off the track controversially by Matt Neal (same racing team as Dan Cammish) in the previous race comes from 25 starting position to get in the points and finish ahead of his nearest rival, Dan Cammish, to win the 2019 BTCC for the fourth time.
In fact it was Cammish's fault. He was too heavy on his braking which the knowledgeable commentators picked up on very early saying his brakes were glowing red. Then at some point they just failed and he went sailing into a gravel trap.
To top it all Jason Plato who has been written off by some people as past it for the last three years pretty much lead the race from the start for his first win of the season and 97th BTCC win.
Good stuff.
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I've seen it a few times now and it's absolutely amazing he managed to get out of that. He unbuckles himself, drags himself out of the cockpit then navigates a mangled crash barrier all while engulfed in a ball of flame with everything hotter then an oven.
Fire crew and medical team were on it in seconds too.
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Its amazing that the deceleration didn't kill him let alone the resulting fire.
The partial separation of the middle and top parts of the three level armco barrier almost like it had been punched through by the car was odd because you'd think that such force would have been a certain ankle or leg breaker.
My theory on that is the wheel on the right side hit first snapped off and the axle was by fluke at just the right level to act like a tin opener in the small gap between the first and second armco levels. But it also acted as a brake and pivot creating the turning force that twisted the car clockwise, forcing the front further through the gap, ripping the back off but, vitally also reducing the deceleration to survivable levels.
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I agree, so something must have caused that.
They were speculating on C4 that there might have been a weakness there due to camera position keyholes but in all the shots I've seen the barrier looks as solid as you'd expect. But it looks like there was a small gap between each tier rather than the overlapping you see with many armco designs.
That's why I was speculating what might have caused the separation and I could not think of anything capable of doing that other than part of the right hand side suspension/wheel hub.
My theory is that by sheer fluke, some part of the right side suspension/hub/axle was at just the right height to force through the small gap between the first and second tiers of the arcmo which, like a tin opener, was widened by the immensely strong monocoque as it pivoted clockwise.
It'll be be interesting to hear the official reports about why it separated.
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