Jason Plato has won the second of today’s three title-deciding HiQ MSA British Touring Car Championship races at Brands Hatch.

Plato passed early leader Tom Chilton’s Team Aon Ford Focus in the closing stages to take his second win of the day in his Racing Silverline Chevrolet.

Finishing second was Vauxhall’s Fabrizio Giovanardi and in a vital third Team RAC BMW driver Colin Turkington after fighting his way through from eighth on the grid.

In a nail-biting finale and for the first time since 2000, all three drivers - Turkington, Giovanardi and Plato - will go into this afternoon’s last race of the season in with a chance of the title. Just eight points separate them with 15 available for the race win.

The points situation entering the race will be Turkington (262), Giovanardi (258), Plato (254).

Adding to the unpredictability, Giovanardi's VXR team-mate Matt Neal has been picked to start race three from pole position as the top eight finishers in race two are reversed at the front of the grid.

Finishing the race in fourth and fifth to add to their top-six results in race one were Airwaves BMW team-mates Robert Collard and Jonathan Adam. A dejected Chilton, his Focus laden with success ballast for the first time in 2009 after its second place finish in race one, was sixth.

He'd led until lap 15 of 18 when Plato barged past him at Druids Hill Bend, this leading to the race's most dramatic moment as a queue of four cars all tried to take advantage of his loss of momentum. In a brave move, the lurking Giovanardi drove around the outside of him through Surtees Bend, this tripping up both Collard and Adam enough to allow Turkington to pass all three of them by Westfield Bend. Collard and Adam, though, were quick to follow him through past Chilton. Notably, Turkington had a brave lap one move - when he squeezed down the inside of Neal into Westfield - to thank for getting into a position to challenge the leading group of cars.

Another driver who should have been among this lot was Andrew Jordan but his Vauxhall Vectra suffered a puncture just as the others were pouncing on Chilton. Having run wide at Westfield Bend, he crawled back to the pit lane for a replacement tyre before finishing a distant 16th.

Paul O'Neill scored more points with a fine seventh-place finish in his sunshine.co.uk/Tech-Speed Honda Integra after firmly pushing Neal out wide through Druids. Neal rejoined the track down in 14th but by the finish had recovered to finish in the eighth place that has given him pole for race three.

Tom Onslow-Cole gave Team Aon a second points score by crossing the line in ninth ahead of Gordon Shedden's Club SEAT Leon. They headed a cluster of five cars separated by less than a second at the flag. Among them was Racing Silverline's Mat Jackson who was again out of the points after a clash, this time with Team RAC's Anthony Reid, and his fourth place in the championship is under threat from Neal, with just two points between them heading into race three.

His clash with Reid left the latter stranded in the gravel trap at Surtees Bend. Other retirements included Johnny Herbert who, for the second race in a row, came to grief at Druids Hill Bend. Matt Hamilton (TH/Inten Honda Civic) and Martyn Bell (sunshine/Tech-Speed Honda Integra) were both out on lap one. Bell was sent spinning in a collision with Herbert, with the unfortunate Hamilton also getting tangled up in the incident.