Drama at Oulton…..Honda’s embarassing “Red Bull” collision and Plato’s televised meltdown:

Now as infamous as what Sebastien Vettel and Mark Webber did in the Turkish Grand Prix last year, British Touring Car championship leaders Matt Neal and Gordon Shedden re-enacted it in embarassing circumstances battling for the lead at the final corner of the second race of an insane weekend at Oulton Park….

(Originally uploaded by Motorsports45, click link name for video/author details)

…Latest BTCC championship standings also included below –

Neal had been sything through the field up to this point, and after already having had one coming together at the hairpin on the penultimate lap with his team-mate, he saw a gap at the final corner, which was too optimistic. Cue lock-up, collision, gasps or shouting from everybody, and red faces all round.

Just imagine how Neal felt after this mistake – it was possibly one of the most embarassing examples of the number one written faux pas called “DON’T take out your team-mate”, or at least very close to Red Bull’s version. His mind won’t have been in a good state from this, he knows he didn’t mean for it to happen.

He didn’t need to do it with the points they were wrapping up at this point, but Matt has always been a fighter, and as Shedden said in a very magnanimous interview alongside his team-mate after the race they both want to win, and there is no friction between them.

It is also simply created by the fact that they clearly have the best car out there this season, so they will clearly feel in their minds that they need to beat each other at any chance they get from now on.

So as a result of this, Plato somehow made it through the final corner without falling off the road laughing to steal a lucky win – you would think for him that this would be perfect wouldn’t you?

Wrong.

Much to Louise Goodman’s discomfort, the reigning champion then compounded the madness of race two by having a complete car-parity-induced meltdown in his ITV4 interview afterwards…..enjoy!

(Uploaded by Formula1Arab, click link name for video/author details) 

Championship standings after round four:

Despite all the action and the dramas – mostly surrounding Plato and the Honda boys, Neal and Shedden have come out of the weekend ahead in the series, while there is a mere 15 points now seperating the top five –

01	Matt Neal	103
02	Gordon Shedden	101
03	Mat Jackson	96
04	James Nash	95
05	Jason Plato	91
06	Andrew Jordan	88
07	Tom Chilton	53
08	Alex MacDowall	44
09	Rob Collard	33
10	Paul O’Neill	30
11	Tom Boardman	30
12	Tony Gilham	12
13	Jeff Smith	12
14	Nick Foster	11
15	Tom Onslow-Cole	9
16	Andy Neate	7
17	Dave Newsham	5
18	Lea Wood	4
19	Liam Griffin	2
20	Rob Austin	0
21	Frank Wrathall	0
22	John George	2
23	Tony Hughes	0
24	Chris James	0

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