The best part of living life are the stories that you get to share with others along the way. I can say it for just about every single solitary year of my life: the stories that I have defy belief, I swear. From the high-school hijinks that can only be had by an unsupervised teenager with a fairly solid income, to the absolutely unreal stories that I’m still not certain I can tell from my military days (including the one that involved three strippers in an Explorer in the middle of nowhere with pizza and beer, or the one involving a red Camaro, a pry bar and a constantly full fuel tank on Friday nights…) to the fun that has been had during my tenure here at BangShift. I’m realistically somewhere about halfway through life and I’m amazed to this day that I’m still here and still around with some of the shit that I’ve gotten up to. And you know that you’ve got stories like that. And if you don’t…well, there’s no time like the present to make some stories like that.
I’m bringing that up because, bluntly, this interview with British touring car driver Jason Plato isn’t going to be a fun walk down the memory lane of racing stories. Oh, there’s plenty of ’em…Plato is one of the high names from the wild-assed era of British Touring Car Championship racing, the years where he was at the forefront of the battles, where he would square off with some of the most deranged sedan drivers on a track. But trust us…his on-track exploits are the least of what you’ll get to hear. Just wait until you hear how he managed to total out a Lancia Delta Integrale after three weeks of ownership, or the things he got up to with Michael Schumacher and Travis Pastrana. Who says Brits don’t have a sense of humor?
The stories of my crew are true but nearly unbelievable. We had some wild ass times and are lucky to have survived. Some epic times that could be made into a movie. Totally relate to what your saying Chad.