Jason Plato is ready to put the worst year of his career behind him when he returns to action in the BTCC opener at Brands Hatch this weekend.

A year ago, the two-time champion was in bullish mood about his Subaru Levorg’s prospects, predicting a “brilliant chance” of a championship win.

And so it came to pass, but it was Ash Sutton and not the BTCC’s winning-most driver spraying Champagne back at Brands in the autumn.

Plato’s own car never fully recovered from damage sustained in a crash in the second race of the season and, despite recording race win number 96 at Knockhill, it was a “disastrous year” on the track, but a satisfying one off it.

Photo credit: Gergo Toth Photography (Also main image)

“I haven’t given too much thought about what went on last year,” he says, with an all-new car ready to roll at Brands. “It was my annus horribilis and it has just been parked.

“For me as a racing driver, it was a shocker, the worst year of my career with all sorts of problems and some dreadful luck.

Champagne was sprayed and everyone had a good time

“Even though I had a disastrous year I had reconciled myself to that fact probably mid year, and to see it all work was brilliant for everybody involved. Champagne was sprayed and everyone had a good time.

So on to 2018, and Plato maintains that he is as focused and determined at 50 as he was more than 20 years ago when he made his BTCC debut for Frank Williams.

“Age makes no difference,” he says. “My sport is a sitting down indoor sport! Every year I start, and every time I get in the car I’m revving for it.

“I’m not interested in what people say, I know what I feel like when I get up in the morning and how I feel when I jump in a race car, and I know how much it matters to me.

“The winter was good to me, I got to get away and re-energise. I’ve lost about three kilos in weight, I’m the lightest I’ve been for a good few years and I’m really looking forward to it.

“I feel fresh when I get out of the car and I’m focused and determined. That can be the one thing which turns the screw – if you don’t feel good, and you’re not focused, determined and looking forward to the challenge. It’s that, more than the physical bit, that will let you down. I feel exactly the same in my mindset now as I ever have.

“The one thing that has changed was when my daughters arrived nine or 10 years ago – I started to drive much slower on the roads and look twice coming out of junctions. But on the track, it’s exactly the same.”

The Adrian Flux Subaru Racing Levorg, sporting new livery on the outside, has also undergone some fine-tuning over the winter to try to counteract the centre of gravity regulations that only apply to the Team BMR cars.

Photo credit: Gergo Toth Photography

“There’s been quite a lot of fine tuning, moving stuff around,” says Plato. “We’ve tried to repackage the car to alter the weight distribution a little bit.

“Last year, the centre of gravity adjustment was last minute and we didn’t really have a great deal of a chance once the year got underway to think how to repackage stuff to get over the issues.

“The car does feel very different to last year.”

Ambitions for Brands this weekend are somewhat muted because of one or two technical issues that still need to be ironed out, combined with a lack of testing time.

“We are a little bit on the back foot because we haven’t done as much testing as we wanted to,” adds Plato.

“We do believe we’ve got the basics right, but whereas the target for this weekend would normally be podiums, we’re mostly looking to get three good finishes, get some good points on the board and get some reliability and not have any incidents.

“The pencil’s not sharp yet but it will be in a very short space of time and the aim is while we’re still in the process of getting it pointy we’re still scoring good points.

“Then we’ll start ramping the programme up and look at the front on the pack after that.”

* ITV4 will be showing live coverage of Saturday’s qualifying session online only from 3pm, with live coverage of Sunday’s meeting on TV from 10.15am

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