Rory Butcher believes AmD head to the British Touring Car Championship season opener at Brands Hatch this weekend with a good platform to work from.
The Scotsman’s deal to race one of the team’s MG6 GT machines was only confirmed during March, but with testing mileage already under his belt at Donington Park and Brands Hatch, both driver and team are confident of restoring the race-winning chassis to former glories.
Both shells have been stripped down and re-built by Shaun Hollamby’s outfit ahead of the series’ 60th Anniversary season.
2018 will mark the 31-year old’s first full campaign in the category, having deputized for an injured Luke Davenport at Motorbase Performance during the second half of last season.
Butcher was classified 11th fastest at the official Season Launch a fortnight ago, seven tenths of a second adrift of Rob Austin’s pace-setting Alfa Romeo Giulietta, but Butcher insisted that testing times should be viewed cautiously.
“You have to take the results of testing with a pinch of salt as you don’t know what programme people are running, but I’m happy with where we stand going into the opening rounds of the year,” commented Butcher.
“Considering that the Media Day test was pretty much a shakedown for my car, we’ve shown decent pace straight out of the box and I’ve soon got a feeling for the MG and what it can do.
“I think we head to Brands Hatch with a good platform to work with and the target has to be to fight for some points.
“If we can do that considering the strength of the grid then I think it’ll be a good weekend for our first outing with the car, and hopefully we can start to build some momentum to push our way forwards up the order.”