Rory Butcher rues race day rain at Croft

Rory Butcher was full of praise for his Cobra Sport AmD team after battling back from a qualifying shunt to score a top eight finish at Croft, although the Scot was left to rue the rain that affected the final race of the weekend.

Butcher headed to Croft as joint championship leader alongside Colin Turkington but saw his chances of keeping pace with the WSR man hit by a hefty impact with the tyres after a spin at the chicane before he had set a timed lap.

With his car repaired overnight, Butcher was able to fight forwards to 18th on the hard tyre in race one before taking race two in 14th, having lost time when he was forced wide at the final corner by Subaru’s Senna Proctor.

Rain ahead of the final race prevented Butcher from making the most of being on the regular compound tyre when the majority of the field were running the less favourable hard, but he still came through to secure a fine seventh spot having fought hard with Turkington and Andrew Jordan throughout the race.

“I have to say a huge thank you to the team for getting the car fixed for race day after what happened in qualifying as it was a big hit,” he said. “To be honest, I hoped we could have taken more from race day but the tyre selections worked against us and when we got rid of the weight after race one, there wasn’t really anyone on the hard tyre in race two. Getting punted off the road also didn’t help…

“Had the final race been dry then I think we could have really pushed up the order because most of the grid would have been on the hard tyre, but we still did well on the wets and to make up seven spots and fight with Turkington and Jordan shows how competitive we are.

“It’s nice to pushing guys like that as a circuit where the BMW is so strong and hopefully at Oulton Park we’ll have a bit more luck.”