Background and career
Timothy Jason Plato (born 14 October 1967) is a British former racing driver and former team principal/founder of Plato Racing. He last competed professionally in the 2022 British Touring Car Championship for BTC Racing. He has twice been BTCC Champion, in 2001 for Vauxhall and 2010 for Silverline Chevrolet. Plato has finished in the top-three in the Championship 13 times and holds the record for the most overall race wins in the BTCC with 97 (94 overall) and 3 extra class wins. He has also served as a presenter on the motoring television series Fifth Gear since 2004.
After success in karting including a 1989 British Championship win in the Junior TKM Class, Oxford-born Plato raced in Formula Three and Formula Renault. In 1996, he entered the Renault Spider championship, taking a dominant title win.
In 1997, Plato gained the second drive in the Williams-Renault BTCC team, after Frank Williams organised a test between him, Gianni Morbidelli and Jean-Christophe Boullion with the fastest getting the contract offer. After being overlooked by Williams, Plato travelled to the Williams base and after some convincing, Sir Frank gave Plato the drive. Plato took pole for his first three races in the Renault Laguna, and ultimately won two races as a rookie, taking third in the championship which was won by his team-mate Alain Menu. He was fifth in the series in each of the next two years.
Plato joined Vauxhall in 2000, again taking fifth place in the championship. For 2001, the series had a new set of reduced-cost rules, fewer big-name drivers as a result, and Vauxhall had by far the best car. In a contentious and hard-fought season, Plato won the championship after team-mate Yvan Muller's car caught fire at the last round.
With an ambition to get into NASCAR racing, Plato moved to the British ASCAR stock car scene in 2002, finishing third in the championship for XCEL Motorsport Ford Taurus. In 2003, Plato was a driver coach for SEAT, returning to the BTCC with the Spanish team in 2004.
Plato was employed by SEAT to help with their driver development in 2003, and when they entered a BTCC team in 2004, he was the natural choice to lead the team. However the new SEAT Toledo needed developing if it were to become a race winner. Despite the development work needed, the car proved to be a winner right from the start, with Plato going on to win more races than any other driver (seven in total), finishing third overall in the championship. The regulations for 2004 meant that the driver who finished tenth in the first of the meeting's three races had pole (and a light car) for race 2, and the winner of race 2 had pole for race 3 (although with a now-heavier car). As a result of this, the championship rules were changed to reversing the top-ten of the race 3 grid, putting an end to this tactic, and the pace of Matt Neal's Team Dynamics Honda and Yvan Muller's Vauxhall left Plato unable to challenge for a second title in 2005. He finished fourth in the 2005 championship with only three wins to his credit during the season, with the team now run by Northern South.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
