Plato secures historic first diesel win to end a week of celebrations.

Jason Plato capped a fine weekend on a personal level with his best weekend of the HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship season at Donington Park to secure the first diesel-powered win in the 50 year history of the series.

The SEAT Sport UK driver, who became a father for the first time on the Monday prior to the race weekend, went into the weekend looking to benefit from a series of radical set-up changes made to the SEAT Leon TDi ahead of the third round of the year.

At a circuit that wasn't well suited to the petrol-powered Leon - despite a double win last season - Plato qualified on the front row of the grid just behind Tom Onslow-Cole and then dropped to fifth place after making an error on lap two at the Old Hairpin. However, he worked his way up the order to second place and then took advantage of an error from the Vauxhall man out front to take a lead he wasn't going to lose to secure the first diesel-win for the team in the BTCC.

Plato followed that up with a second place finish in race two behind 2007 title rival Fabrizio Giovanardi and then capped a memorable week with third place in the final race of the weekend; a race won by team-mate Darren Turner.

"Bloody hell it's been a good week!" Plato reflected to Crash.net afterwards. "I can't put into words the feeling about the birth of my first little girl. Sophie is safe and well and so is little Alena and I've never, ever wanted to get the hell out of a race track so quick so I can get home and see them! It's a very different kind of feeling being at the race track now when they aren't here and there are amazing times ahead with family life.

"We wet the babies head in fine style but I've now decided that babies and hangovers don't mix, so I think there will be some calming down. But there will also be an element of the fact that you can't change a leopards spots...

"Back on track, it's been a great weekend for everyone at SEAT Sport UK. It hasn't been an easy start to the year with the introduction of the diesel and whilst we have great support from Spain and their WTCC programme, their cars run on different tyres and we have different weights to them. They have rolling starts and circuits that are different to ours and their first two events have been at altitude where the diesel should perform.

"There has been a lot of pressure to perform and we've struggled a bit to find the balance to get the car to work and serious things need serious measures. We found some odd stuff at Rockingham that we bolted on, really ludicrous set-up things, and took a huge gamble. We had to do that or would have gone through the season with a dominant understeer characteristic in the car and I have to say that the engineers and technicians have worked so hard to change the car all the time to find the best set-up."

Plato added that he was also pleased to see Turner secure his maiden win of the campaign on a weekend that saw SEAT close the gap to Vauxhall in both the manufacturers' and teams' championship - and predicted good things lie ahead in the next round of the year at Thruxton.

"Over the last four or five years, peoples general opinion has been that this is my team and revolves around me but it doesn't and never will do," he said. "It's great for Darren as he'd had a strong day and it is nice that this wild set-up, which I admit I pushed for and Darren was a bit wary about, has helped him and got his tail in the air. We've made progress and the future looks great, and when people are happy and can smell success, they work better. If we go to Thruxton and have another strong weekend like we have here, we'll be hard to beat.

"I'm really upbeat about Thruxton and if we can improve the areas of the car that we need to improve and make the car more driveable then we will be very fast there. I'm predicting another win and if we don't win, given what we now know about the car, then I'll be disappointed."