Jason Plato will be delighted with the outcome of the first race as he took a convincing win in the Chevrolet Cruze after starting from the front row of the grid. His win was made even better with Matt Neal failing to finish the race with a puncture late on.

Going into the race the Chevrolet team looked in a good position with both MacDowall and Plato starting on the front row but a fairytale race for MacDowall wasn’t to be as he incurred a problem from the start which was later revealed as a gearstick coming away from its housing. A very strange and unfortunate problem which saw the youngster retire from the race.

That left Plato to lead the race but he came under instant pressure from Mat Jackson who started from his best qualifying position of the season in 4th. Mat put the BTCC veteran under immense pressure throughout the race but Plato was too strong for the BMW driver with Jackson having to settle for 2nd place.

Tom Chilton brought the LPG powered Ford Focus home in 3rd position. Speaking to ITV he said “I don’t know what trick they’ve (Plato and Jackson) have up their sleeve but I need to find out what it is.” Throughout the race Chilton just couldn’t close the gap on the two frontrunners in a car which is considerably faster on the straights and in a straight line.

This speed of the Ford Focus’ was a contributing factor in Tom Onslow-Cole’s performance today. He came from 21st on the grid to finish in a very respectable 6th place after failing the ride height checks yesterday afternoon.

Shedden finished the race in 4th followed by James Nash in the S2000 Vauxhall Vectra. Nash started from 9th place on the grid but capitalized well on drivers battling ahead of him to make up the positions.

Matt Neal will be livid with the luck he had today. Before the race he admitted that today would be a case of “damage limitation” but with two laps to go it looked like he would finish in a respectable 7th place but a front left puncture thwarted his chances and gave Jason Plato a 17 point swing after the first race. Matt Neal’s retirement will also mean that he will start from the back end of the grid with rival Plato starting from the best possible position on pole.

You can view the full race results by clicking here.

Race two will start at 1420 and you can follow all the action live with our twitter commentary service @BTCCCrazyLive.

Photo Credit: Bob Knightley

James Mappin is the editor-in-chief covering the British Touring Car Championship. You can contact him at james@btcccrazy.co.uk, on twitter @BTCCCrazy or on his personal twitter account @jamesmappin.