Rory Butcher pleased with qualifying fightback

Rory Butcher declared himself pleased with a top five showing in qualifying at Oulton Park after a troubled start to the fifth round of the BTCC season.

Eager to bounce back to form after a tough weekend at Croft, where a qualifying shunt left him at the back of the grid, the Cobra Sport AmD man found himself off the pace in practice as a wastegate issue affected his running in the second session.

Lowering his expectations for qualifying as a result, the Scot instead produced his most impressive performance of the weekend to date to secure fifth on the grid – leaving him confident of a solid haul of points on race day.

“Coming into the weekend I felt we should be in the top eight and that the car would be strong,” he said. “I’m not going to lie, but after practice I thought it would be great if we could get into the top ten, so to end up in P5 is something I’m delighted with.

“After Croft, it would have been easy to let my head drop but I want to get the momentum going again and I’m looking forward to Sunday.

“We’ve chosen to run the soft tyre in race two so the aim is to get through race one and try and hold onto our position and then build from there. We’ll hopefully still have some ballast in the second race but I’m keen to try and bring home three solid scores.”