Jason Plato took a hard fought victory in round 3 of the British touring car championship, as any concerns about the new sprint race regulations were laid to rest in front of an expectant bumper crowd.

However it wasn't plain sailing for Plato - who qualified on pole - as a bad start allowed teammate Yvan Muller to lead the touring car class field into the complex for the first time. Steve Soper showed his experience to move ahead of Phil Bennett for 4th place, and at the back of the field debutant Kurt Luby in the ABG prepared Lexus IS 200 found himself 3 abreast in a JSM sandwich going into Campbell and somehow Luby exited Cobb ahead of the 2 Alfa Romeos.

After a 12 second delay the union flag dropped to start the production class field and pole setter Simon Harrison followed by Techspeed driver Paul O'Neill in their Peugeot 306's led the race proper into the complex. Biggest gain of the opening lap was by Tom Boardman who made the most of a good size gap and braking very late snuck up the inside of several cars to claim 3rd place after starting 11th on the grid to make it a Peugeot 306 1-2-3.

There was continued disappointment for Alfa Romeo as yet another engine failure forced Tom Ferrier into retirement. It turned out to be sad end to Ferrier's weekend as he had out qualified teammate Dave Pinkney by a full 7/10ths of a second in a rapidly improving 147.

More bad news for another struggling team - VLR Peugeot - as Steve Soper suffered both a stuck throttle and handling problems, which resulted in him retiring from the race on lap 2 after limping back to the pit lane. Colleague Dan Eaves also suffered as 2 blown tyres forced him to pit - he rejoined the race albeit way down the order.

Meanwhile, Jason Plato was about to make the move, which enabled him to go on and take maximum sprint race points. Approaching the complex for the 3rd time, Jason pulled off a daring move on Yvan Muller. The Frenchman left the slightest of gaps into Campbell and Plato out braked him to pull alongside and if spectators had any doubts about 888 team orders it was here that they were answered. Muller made a slight adjustment to avoid any contact and Plato slid ahead. He then began the task of bearing down on the production cars.

James Thompson made progress and caught the "lead" Astra's of Plato and Muller by lap 5. Kurt Luby then gave way to Dave Pinkney, the Lexus struggling with an electrical problem, which was to force it to retire.

As the race moved into mid distance the Touring cars began making their way through the Production field and unlapping themselves. Passing was difficult until after the Complex section, where superior straight-line speed and horsepower enabled the drivers to pass relatively unhindered.

Tom Boardman was unlucky not to consolidate on his pace after a coming together with the also very quick Renault Clio of Rob Collard, which caused Boardman to retire on Lap 9 Collard was next to fall along with GR Motorsport's Gareth Howell. Broken steering caused by avoiding action and a ride across the Club chicane kerbs was to blame which forced Howell across the rough stuff at the complex and on rejoining the circuit a collision with Collard was unavoidable. The Clio collected the Focus and it was the end of the race for both on lap 10.

Moving towards the closing stages, the Touring cars finally unlapped themselves on Lap 13. Plato had been eating into the lead production cars by some 3 seconds a lap by now, and he finally took the outright lead, taking Simon Harrison of HTML at Campbell who offered no resistance. Muller, Thompson and Bennett made their way past to claim the remaining outright positions.

There was woeful bad luck for Paul O'Neill as a last lap retirement robbed him of what would have been a fantastic podium place. Beneficiaries of this were Barwells James Kaye and Nick Beaumont of Team B&Q.

Plato took the chequered flag 2.3 seconds ahead of Muller who finished less than half a second ahead of Team Egg Sport's James Thompson. The gap between Plato and production class winner Simon Harrison was 19.871seconds, which proved TOCA's decision to make the delay 12 seconds at the start to be fairly accurate.

All in all it was an entertaining race with a lot of overtaking and some good work by the touring car drivers to unlap themselves, though the retirements of Soper and the tyre problems the Peugeot 406 seemed to encounter were worrying. VLR believed that they had made reasonable progress since Rounds 1 and 2 at Brands Hatch.