Jason plato has taken a lights-to-flag victory in the second race at Snetterton, this time seeing off the two Team Aon cars to take the win. Tom Chilton was second ahead of team-mate Tom Onslow-Cole. Crucially another win for Plato now means that he has an increasingly large points lead over closest rival Matt Neal – the margin is now 24 points.
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The start of the race saw Mat Jackson, who finished second earlier on, try and pass Plato around the outside of Riches but Plato held his line and the lead, forcing Jackson to ease off.
The safety car was called out after just one lap of racing after an accident involving Tom Boardman, Paul O’Neill and John George that saw all three drivers retire from the race. Initially James Nash and Boardman made contact going into the bomb hole, before Boardman then spun back accross the track and into the path of the two Team sunshine.co.uk cars in an accident reminiscent of Nash and Rob Collard’s incident last year.
When the safety car came in at the end of lap 6 Plato made a clean restart, whereas Jackson came under immediate pressure from the two Team Aon Ford Focus’ of Tom Chilton and Tom Onslow-Cole, who had a great opening lap to make up two positions. Going into lap 8, after brief contact at the Russell chicane, both Tom’s were able to power past Jackson on the start/finish straight – using their superior engine performance to make the moves look easy. This is despite both cars being forced to have an even smaller restrictor fitted prior to the start of the race.
Tom Chilton went on to hold on to second until the end of the race, despite sustained pressure from Onslow-Cole who had to settle for third. Steven Kane finished in fourth position having passed team-mate Jackson on lap 14 when he ran wide at Sear corner. Jackson himself was fifth, sustaining pressure from the sixth placed finisher Andrew Jordan.
Rob Collard finished in seventh, the WSR driver making up two positions in one corner on lap 9 when Matt Neal passed Nash into the esses. Neal made no gain, having lost out to Collard, whilst Nash dropped down the order to eventually finish in tenth. Finishing just ahead of Neal and Nash was Gordon Shedden who crossed the line in eighth after a difficult race that saw him slip down the order as the race progressed.
Alex MacDowall had another race to forget – after starting from a lowly 19th he retired after just 9 laps due to a damaged sump.