Rory Butcher is confident that he can bounce back from the disappointment of his previous British Touring Car Championship round at Croft, as the series heads to Oulton Park this weekend.
Butcher had been the joint championship leader going to Croft just over a week ago, but a qualifying shunt left the AmD Tuning driver at the back of the field for race one, and he was only able to claw back one top ten finish thereafter, finishing seventh in race three.
However Butcher is confident for racing at Oulton Park this weekend, where the Honda Civic secured outright pole position last year in the hands of Matt Simpson, whilst Butcher himself made up 13 places in race two in 2018 before being involved in a race three accident.
“I’m confident that the Honda is going to be a strong package when we get to Oulton Park,” said Butcher. “At Croft, I paid the price for the first real mistake I’ve made this season so this weekend, the first aim is to stay out of trouble.
“The BTCC is a series where you have ups and downs – hopefully I’ve now got the down out of the way!
“Last season we saw Matt Simpson put his FK2 Honda on pole position before winning race one at Oulton Park, so I think we can be optimistic about a good weekend on track this time around.
“We lost a little bit of ground in the standings at Croft, and I’ll be pushing hard to try and make some of that ground back up this weekend.”
AmD Team Principal Shaun Hollamby admits that the Essex-based team expected Croft to be a challenge and took a positive from the fact that despite his North Yorkshire troubles, Butcher was still just 30 points away from the top of the table.
“Croft was our most challenging weekend of the year, but we always expected that to be the case,” said Hollamby.
“Hopefully this weekend at Oulton Park will be more straightforward, and we can replicate the kind of results we secured in the opening three rounds.
“Despite his accident at Croft, Rory remains well placed in the standings and it would be good if he could at least maintain his front-running position going into the summer break.”