In short order, along with his old racing life, he also lost his TV work (presenter of Channel 5’s Fifth Gear), a sum of money in investments that went wrong and his marriage. Rock bottom included two attempts to take his own life, he says, and he credits the support of friends such as Brawn for pulling him out of the darkness. Now, returning to the sport he loves as a team owner has given him a new lease of life – in an uncomfortably stark and literal sense.
“But we’re late,” he says of the start-from-scratch project that only really began to take some form in October last year. “There’s no one solely to blame. And guess what? I’ve never run a team before. Yes, I’ve got some experienced people, but it’s probably fair to say they have never been involved with a team like this. The stuff we are ordering and doing, it’s off the scale. We’ve assembled a great team and have kicked the others hard in the nuts because we’ve nicked all of their best staff… I’m sure there are going to be some fireworks.”
Now he’s committed to it, this season will be fascinating if only to see how Plato handles the transition from racing driver to team principal. “I have to respect the business, it’s not about me anymore,” he states. “Regardless of what any driver tells you, they don’t give a f*** about anyone else but themselves. It’s a selfish, blunt, narcissistic game. That’s ingrained in me, because that’s what I’ve been all my life. But now I can’t be like that. If I do something wrong I could hurt people here. So I have to think about things differently.”
RML has leased one of its units to Plato Racing – the same one out of which it ran Plato to the second of his titles in 2010, in a Chevrolet Cruze. Company CEO Paul Dickinson is all too aware of the fine line RML is walking. Under the BTCC’s tightly regulated New Generation Touring Car (NGTC) rulebook, it supplies all the suspension parts for the entire grid: wishbones, pushrods, rockers, uprights, steering systems and the front and rear subframes that house them.
Now RML is also building a complete car, just as it used to with the Chevys and back in the 1990s with Vauxhall and Nissan. “Let’s be clear, the other teams are worried, as I would be if I was them,” admits Dickinson, who needed to work hard to convince BTCC boss Alan Gow that Plato wouldn’t be gaining an unfair advantage by commissioning RML to create its pair of A-Class Mercs. “But this is why we’re not running the cars,” he adds, emphasising this is a supplier relationship: yes, RML built the cars, but it has now handed them over to Plato’s team to race them. “At events we will be there in our RML shirts in the RML truck selling parts. We won’t be in the Plato truck optimising his car.”
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