It was a flawless win for the reigning British Touring Car Champion as he went from pole position to take the victory in the first race of the day in Norfolk at the Snetterton circuit.

Starting from the pole position, the two time champion never looked back as main rival and current championship leader, Matt Neal, faltered and failed to score points after his lap one incident. His win moves Plato up to fourth in the championship and just 22p points behind Matt Neal with two more races left to race today.

Speaking about the win, Plato said, “Qualifying for us is key for the season and with us having no success ballast it made for a good and exciting race.”

Following contact with Jason Plato on the exit of Riches, Matt Neal took the the grass and ended with the car facing the wrong way and him ending up at the back of the field. Speaking about the incident, Plato said, “Anyone that goes around the outside of the first corner at Snetterton and tries to overtake me on the grass is a brave man. His opportunistic style didn’t work for him today.”

Further up the field MacDowall fended off the challenge from Gordon Shedden to finish 2nd and make it a Chevrolet 1-2. “We’re quick through the corners and we’ve definitely got a good car around here and it’s just a shame yesterday that we couldn’t take pole position,” said the 21-year-old MacDowall.

“We made a good start and it was just a matter of holding on. I put in a few fast laps over Gordon [Shedden] and then just backed off which is a great luxury to have.”

MacDowall will start the second race from the front row of the grid and he’s confident for another good finish. “If I can get off to a good start then that would be great. Theres a few changes we can make to improve the car and I think we can go quicker in the second race.”

The performance of the day has to go to Frank Wrathall who started from 7th on the grid but climbed three places to finish fourth and take the Independent victory in his NGTC Toyota Avensis. His 4th place finish was also the best finish of any NGTC car this season and the first time that an NGTC car has scored a point this season.

James Nash failed to improve on his 5th place grid position but it was Mat Jackson who was the big mover. Starting in 13th the title challenger worked his way up to 6th and scored vital points in the title challenge especially after Matt Neal failed to score. That means that the lead has been cut to just four points for the championship lead over Matt Neal.

One of the biggest battles of the race came when Paul O’Neill battled with Mat Jackson for much of the second half of the race. Despite his every efforts to pass, the Widnes-based driver had to settle for 7th.

Tom Onslow-Cole finished ahead of his team-mate, Tom Chilton, who had a problem on the last lap which slipped him down the order from 5th to 9th with Dave Newsham taking the final points position of the race.

Elsewhere Martin Byford finished his first BTCC race in 14th ahead of the NGTC Audi of Rob Austin whereas Dan Welch in the Proton suffered gear selection problems late on which dropped him down to 22nd.

For a full breakdown of the results click here.

Click here for the grid for the second race of the day.

Click here for the championship standings following race 16.

Photo Credit: Pete Mainey (www.psmmotorsportimages.co.uk)

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.