Who could have asked for anything more from today’s final meeting in the British Touring Car Championship, around the Brand Hatch GP circuit? No-one, that’s who.

Race 1 was led by pole sitter Tom Chilton until the very last corner, when Jason Plato made a quite stunning move to take victory by 0.015 seconds, the smallest ever margin in the BTCC. It was bloody lovely.

Race 2 was critical for Colin Turkington, who fought his way through from 8th on the grid to finish 3rd, in a series of extremely close, but ultimately clean, multi-car encounters. Plato won again, with Fabrizio Giovanardi between them. That left the championship at Turkington 4 points ahead of Giovanardi, and Plato a further 4 points back. You couldn’t have written a better script.

Race 3 contained a heart-threatening amount of drama. Cartoon villain Matt Neal started on pole, and his job was to get in Turkington’s way to hand Giovanardi the title. No-one likes Neal, so despite Turkington being stuck between Neal and Giovanardi for a time, happily he failed in his task, and the slow pace set by Neal really just let Chilton overtake Giovanardi.

Turkington took the lead from Neal in a satisfyingly physical manner, given Neal’s reputation. Contact between Turkington and Giovanardi, though, enabled Plato to come through from 8th on the grid to take the win. It looked like Turkington might have sustained damage, but he was fine and finished 2nd. Giovanardi could only manage 4th, behind Chilton.

I think so, anyway; it all happened so fast. If you’ve not seen it, you have to. Really. All three races, actually. Brilliant stuff.

It made Plato only the second man to win all three races at a meeting, the first being Dan Eaves at Thruxton in 2005.

But more importantly, it made Colin Turkington an extremely happy, emotional and popular BTCC champion. The scenes of him celebrating with his family, and the team, were an utterly delightful end to a stonking season.