Rory Butcher: ‘We never got in the window’

Rory Butcher admitted he was frustrated at not making it into the top ten during the opening rounds of the BTCC season at Donington Park.

The Speedworks driver was hoping to benefit from revisions made to his Toyota Corolla over the winter, including the addition of a new Neil Brown Engineering-developed power plant under the bonnet.

It would prove to be a tricky weekend for the Scot however, who qualified 13th on the grid for race one and could only make it up to eleventh by the finish.

Waiting to switch onto wet tyres until race two was underway meant Butcher dropped off the lead lap and could only take 14th place, whilst a trip off track restricted him to another eleventh place in race three – leaving him playing catch up in the early season standings.

“We didn’t really get the car in the window for most of the weekend,” he said. “Introducing a new engine affects so many different elements, and all day Saturday, it felt like we were searching for something and I struggled to settle into a rhythm.

“I was on a better lap when the red flag flew towards the end of Q1, but it would probably only just have lifted us into the top ten so there was definitely still more pace to find.

“We went the wrong way on set-up for race one, which left us battling understeer and lacking speed, and we then took a gamble in race two that didn’t pay off, which kind of summed up our weekend – the cards simply didn’t fall our way. That said, we made progress throughout the day and took a big step in race three, when the Corolla felt mega and I was really in the groove.

“Annoyingly, I made a little mistake and ran wide, which meant I had to do it all over again, but I enjoyed coming through the field and now that we know better where we stand, we can hopefully move forward.”