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<body> <Table Width="550" border="0" style="border-collapse: collapse" cellpadding="0"><TR><TD Width="35"><IMG SRC="//www.totalmotorsport.com/images/spacer.gif" WIDTH="35" HEIGHT="1"></td><td> <CENTER><Table border="0" width="100%"> <TR><TD width="100%" align="center"><B><FONT FACE="Tahoma" SIZE="5">BTCC</FONT></B></TD></TR> <TR><TD width="100%" align="left"><B><FONT FACE="Tahoma" SIZE="2">09/05/2004</FONT></B></TD></TR> <TR><TD width="100%" align="center"><B><FONT FACE="Tahoma" SIZE="4">Plato Gives SEAT First Qualified Pole Position</FONT></B></TD></TR> <TR><TD width="100%" align="center"><B><FONT FACE="Tahoma" SIZE="3">Changing Weather Gives SEAT A Hand</FONT></B></TD></TR> <TR><TD width="100%" align="center"><FONT FACE="Tahoma" SIZE="1">  </FONT></TD></TR> <TR><TD width="100%" align="left"><FONT FACE="Tahoma" SIZE="2"><IMG border="1" SRC="../Championships/Storage/seat-plato-silverstone-q-04.jpg" hspace="9 "align="left"><B>Plato Gives SEAT First Qualified Pole Position Worldwide</B><BR> <BR> SEAT Sport UK driver Jason Plato ecstatically put his Toledo Cupra on pole position for round seven of the Green Flag MSA British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) at Silverstone this afternoon, giving the new team it’s first pole position on only it’s third BTCC race meeting and SEAT it’s first qualified pole position worldwide! <BR> <BR> SEAT Sport UK played an excellent game of tactics as a wet qualifying session turned to dry by timing the move from wets to slicks to perfection. The last driver to cross the line of the 2.249 mile Silverstone International Circuit, Jason took the chequered flag on full slicks, grabbing the perfect lap and pole position in a time of 1:34.091. <BR> <BR> Team-mate Robert Huff wasn’t quite so lucky; trying to adopt the same tactics as Jason, he ran out of time to make the move to full slicks and ended up qualifying in 13th position. <BR> <BR> <B>Jason said:</B> <BR> “We planned that if it was going to be a half wet half dry qualifying session I needed to do two or three laps with slicks on the front and wets on the rear and get some heat into the slicks and then transfer them to the rear. But in doing that I also needed to allow enough time to heat the new ones up and try and grab some flying laps as close to the chequered flag as possible, because I knew that was going to give the quickest time. I thought at first I’d got it wrong as I did one extra lap while I was on wets and wasted a couple of minutes, but in the end it worked brilliantly and we got pole. I said I wanted to be the last person to cross the line and I was. It’s a fantastic result for the team as it is SEAT’s first ever pole position worldwide!”<BR> <BR> <B>Rob said: </B><BR> “It all came down to tyres in the end. We had slicks on the front and wets on the rear and the plan was to warm up the front ones and put them on the back and then put new slicks on the front. Jason managed to do this but we just ran out of time to do the change and do a flying lap so I just stayed out there. Thirteen - unlucky for some, lucky for others!”</FONT></TD></TR> </TABLE><BR> </CENTER> <BR><CENTER><font size="1" color="#808080" face="Tahoma">Copyright ©2000-©2023 TotalMotorSport</font></CENTER> </td> </tr> </table> </body>