Trying time at Oulton Park for recovering Mike Bushell

It was a far from straightforward return to the BTCC for series rookie Mike Bushell at Oulton Park, following a tough battle to ensure both he and his AmD Tuning Ford Focus were fit for action.

The reigning Clio Cup champion returned to the track for the first time since his huge accident in qualifying at Thruxton, which left him with severe ligament damage and a hefty repair bill for his car.

The team worked hard to repair the damaged Focus in the run-up to the weekend, while Bushell was relieved to be passed fit to race. But despite moments of promise during the weekend, both Bushell and the team were left with little to show for their efforts.

Bushell finished 24th and 22nd in the first two races, before an accident while battling for points in the finale put him into retirement.

“What I wouldn’t give for some luck!” he said. “Even though we had to start from the back of the grid because of my penalty, qualifying was great and the performance of the car was really good. We knew we needed to post a quick time in race one to try and get ourselves up the grid for race two so we took a bit of a gamble on set-up and it didn’t really work, which meant we had work to do in the second race.

“Things were going okay until contact with Rob [Austin] damaged the handling and we had a bit of a spin, and then in race three, the car felt strong and we had the pace to move forwards. Unfortunately, going into the hairpin I got a hit from behind which forced me into Rob and he ran wide. I tried to go up the inside, he cut back across into me, and that was that.

“It’s not been the best weekend in terms of the end results, but after Thruxton, the positive is that we live to fight another day and we’ll come out fighting when we get to Croft.”

Team boss Shaun Hollamby added: “I’m really proud of the team for the way they worked to get us here this weekend and it’s a shame that they haven’t been rewarded with some points.

“Mike has been able to learn a lot from this weekend and now we can turn our focus to Croft, where we’ll have our second car out for the first time. Hopefully things will go more our way.”