Plato looking to lose weight

SEAT Sport UK driver Jason Plato, one of the favourites for the 2005 BTCC championship, has aired concerns about the capability of his team as they start the new season, as they will have to run with extra weight compared to how they finished at the end of last year.

Over the course of the 2004 season, series organisers altered the minimum weights of ETCC (now WTCC)-spec cars to keep a level playing field within the series. Rules for the start of this year state that the SEATs have to return to the standard base weight for the first rounds at Donington.

“We’ve got to start on base weight, which is about 30 kilos heavier than we were last year,” said Plato during official testing at the championship’s media day. “I’m not really sure why they should plonk 30 kilos on us because we improved last year and we were competitive. Just because Vauxhall have a new car out and they might not be competitive, it’s wrong to then knock us back; SEAT have improved and we should be a bit quicker. Nothing’s written in stone yet, we’ll just have to wait and see what formula they come up with.”

Although SEAT may be starting the season heavier than they would like, the manufacturer does have the advantage of being able to draw information from their WTCC team, with whom they shared a recent test session at Silverstone.

“For sure we’ve got a bigger pool of resources, much more data coming backwards and forwards,” said Plato. “The only difference is the tyres, [the BTCC used Dunlop as opposed to Michelin] which is quite a major difference but never the less there are certain things which they find which maybe be engine related or aerodynamic and can transfer over to our car.”

Plato is still optimistic for his chances this year: “We’ve got continuity of equipment with an evolution of last year’s car, we had good reliability last year. Vauxhall have got a new car and things could go wrong, same with Team Dynamics. I think we’re gonna be in a good position, we’ve just got to see what they do with the weight. Our car is still at a disadvantage to a BTCC car and that needs to be equalised in some way, but if we could start off where we left off last year I think we’ll be competitive.”

Series boss Alan Gow played down the situation: “We look at it during the course of the season like we always do and we make adjustments depending on the performance of their car against others, but you’re talking about a very small amount of weight. The ballast adjustments we make are in 25 kilo lumps so it’s not a huge amount anyway and it just goes to show how closely aligned the two types of car are when you’re making such a small adjustment. They’re never gonna say they’ve got not enough, it’s just the way teams operate.”

By Paul Rayner