Daniel Rowbottom: ‘I know what I’m capable of’

Daniel Rowbottom enjoyed a return to winning ways in the British Touring Car Championship at Snetterton, with victory in race two being his first in almost two years.

The 36-year-old had on Saturday qualified in third for the opening race, his best qualifying result in almost two years, since Croft 2023.

Rowbottom converted that into fourth in the opening race on Sunday, having lost out to team-mate Ash Sutton around the outside of the first corner on the opening lap and Team Vertu’s Adam Morgan a corner later, although he regained the place from the latter two laps later.

Running on the soft tyre in race two, Rowbottom was quickly up to third as team-mate Dan Cammish struggled on the hard tyre on the opening lap, then he took the lead on lap three as Sutton and Tom Ingram likewise struggled on the less favourable tyre compound.

Despite pressure from the Hyundai of Morgan, the NAPA Racing UK driver held on to win his third BTCC race. He had to run the hard tyre in race three, however, and like others struggled on the less grippy tyre, ultimately slipping to 17^th in a safety-car lengthened race.

The Kidderminster racer put some of his upturn in performance down to going in a different direction with the setup on his Ford Focus for the third event of the year.

“It’s great – we’ve rolled up with a completely different philosophy for the car this weekend,” explained Rowbottom to TouringCars.Net. “It’s worked, although we’ve still got to optimise it.

“It’s very different to drive now. Dan Cam has stayed with what we’d call our ‘baseline’ car and obviously it’s still fast, it just wasn’t working very well for me at Brands. It’s a new ethos now and we can optimise it now that we know the base works.

“To get a win in was great. On the hard tyre in race three the deficit is so big there’s nothing you can do. The problem is you can’t brake anywhere near as late and you’ve got some massive stops – Turn 2, Turn 4, the bit in the middle and the bit under the bridge, and you just can’t brake as late as you could on the softs.

“If there’s a soft [tyre-shod] car around you, whether they’ve got turbo boost or not, they’re going to come through.

“Unfortunately, for winning race two we had just one lap of turbo boost for race three. I did everything I could, I was trying to hang on for maybe a point or two.

“I think if the safety car hadn’t have come out, we could have come 13th or 14th. We did the best job we could, but it’s been a good weekend.”

Rowbottom says that whilst getting a win was a relief, his aim is to be in title contention come the end of the year, no matter how many victories he picks up.

“As drivers we all have self-belief. I haven’t had a very good run in BTCC since 2021 – we had a very good year that year and were strong across most of the year.

“I’ve won a lot of championships elsewhere at a high level, and beaten a lot of very good drivers that have gone on to do much better things than I’ve ever done, but I know what I’m capable of.

“What people underestimate with BTCC is that these cars are so complex in terms of where you can go with the setup. It doesn’t take much of an adjustment to be ‘off’ for it to not work for you. You’ve got to have these cars just in the window that works for you.

“I’m pleased that we’re making the right moves, and long may it continue. If I can be in the title race at the end of the year and I’ve only won one race all year I don’t give two hoots.”

With no requirement to run an ‘option’ tyre at Thruxton, since the whole field will use the hard compound for all three races, Rowbottom is keen to maximise his score at the Hampshire circuit in ten days’ time where he was victorious in 2022.

“Thruxton is the place where we’ve got to strike hard, because there’s three races where everyone is on the same tyre.

“We’ve just got to make the most of that weekend and bag as many points as possible then we get back to the soft-hard mix at Oulton and it’s a free for all again!”