Chilton: I pity Jason...

Tom Chilton picked up two podium finishes to bring his 2005 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship campaign to a close at Silverstone, although it was an incident with SEAT driver Jason Plato in the second race which was the biggest talking point of the weekend for the Arena Motorsports driver.

Chilton, who will miss the final round of the season at Brands Hatch following the announcement that the Zytek sportscar team will head to America for the final two rounds of the American Le Mans Series season, qualified on the front of the grid around the short Silverstone National circuit and carried that form into the opening race of the weekend as he led home SEAT duo James Pickford and Plato for a fourth win of the year.

With that result giving him pole for the second race, Chilton led though the early stages until he was hit by Plato on the National straight on lap five, dropping the black Honda Civic down to ninth place as the 20-year-old managed to keep the car out of the wall and out of the way of the chasing pack.

"Obviously I was carrying full ballast from the race before and Jason finished third so he was still carrying weight himself but the cars are lighter and they carry four miles and hour extra down the straight," Chilton told Crash.net Radio afterwards. "All you have to do is defend on the straight and then out-drive them round the corners. I was just holding my line, I've been to see the Clerk of the Course and I've looked at the on board camera and I'm just holding the white line all the way along the straight and the next thing I know I get spun round, I've done absolutely nothing wrong.

"I do pity Jason that he has to do stuff like that to get a podium these days - I don't know any races where he has got on the podium without touching someone. I've had nine podium and four wins now this year and not touched anyone to do it and that shows everyone that can do it.

"I was lucky not to hit the wall. I was having to really think about it as I was going backwards, which way I was going to flick the car - it was either into a bunch of guys or into the wall and I managed to keep it on the road and miss both. I've practiced this sideways stuff in the field at home so I am getting better at it but I was lucky to be able to carry on in that race and get the old reverse grid going and start on the front row for the last race."

When Plato was then excluded from the result of race two for careless driving, Chilton was knocked back onto row two of the grid for the final race of the day and was involved in a race long battle with the MG of Rob Collard before securing a podium finish to complete his BTCC campaign.

"Me and Rob both got a good start and we'd had a chat before and I said 'Look if we both get the same start lets do racing lines, I won't bother overtaking you. We'll do five fast laps and we'll pull a gap' and that's exactly what we did," he said. "Then on the fourth or fifth lap, as I started to kiss his bumper to let him know I was there, the safety car come out and that completely shafted it for me. As soon as Gareth [Howell] got behind me in the Integra there wasn't much I could do as he was getting so much slipstream down the straights and he cut the corners well and he drove past me on the start line.

"Apart from that I couldn't have driven any better, I could have tapped Rob on one of the corners and got him sideways to get through but I'm not like that anymore, that was when I was 16 and learning everything. Now I'm 20, I'm settled down and want to show myself as a professional racing driver.

"It's been a great weekend overall. We've been fastest in practice, on the front row in qualifying, had a win and fastest lap and we've had a third. I've also a 130mph spin caused by Jason, he wasn't wearing his glasses or something, but it's been a good weekend."