AmD Tuning’s Rory Butcher said he was “really pleased” with his third row start for the opening British Touring Car Championship race at Oulton Park, after mechanical issues hampered his running in second practice.
After placing ninth in first practice, the Scot had a wastegate issue in the second session which meant he felt on the backfoot heading into qualifying.
With the issue fixed on his Swindon engine, Butcher admitted to TouringCars.Net that heading into qualifying he and race engineer Mike Bushell would have settled for a top twelve start for race one.
“I’m really pleased, we’re carrying 26kg of ballast and we had an issue in FP2, so really me and Mike [Bushell] sat down and said we’d be happy with a top 12 for race day,” said Butcher.
“To come into the pits after the first run on the tyres and we were P4 at that point, it felt really good.
“I just couldn’t hook the middle sector up, so P5 was good enough.”
With temperatures today [30 June] cooler than those for practice and qualifying yesterday, Butcher is hopeful of staying up at the sharp end, running the softer compound Dunlop rubber in race two of the day.
“Over the whole day we want to stay up there, we’ve got to get the first race out of the way,” he said.
“We’ll just have to be smart tomorrow, we’ve got the soft tyre in race two so we’ve got to build up to that one I think.”
The opening race of the day at Oulton Park is set to get underway at 12:20 BST, with a 15-lap encounter around the Cheshire circuit.