Daniel Rowbottom buoyant after ‘finding the rhythm’ in the BTCC

NAPA Racing UK’s Daniel Rowbottom left Thruxton in a buoyant mood, after claiming his second British Touring Car Championship win of the season in race three and moving up to third in the drivers’ championship standings.

Rowbottom emerged as the third-highest scorer of the weekend, scooping 47 points and being behind only title rivals Tom Ingram on 55 points and Ash Sutton on 49 points, to pass Jake Hill in the drivers’ standings.

Having qualified in tenth in a wet session on Saturday afternoon, Rowbottom was swiftly up three places on the opening lap of the first race of the weekend, before passing Senna Proctor and James Dorlin in the middle of the race to take fifth, where he stayed to the finish.

Race two saw Rowbottom hold station in fifth early on, before engaging in a fierce battle with Laser Tools Racing’s Hill for fourth, seeing the duo swap positions several times.

Rowbottom ultimately prevailed by passing the BMW into the chicane on lap 11 to seal a fourth-place finish, which later became third when Josh Cook was excluded for failing the post-race ride height check.

That gave Rowbottom a fifth-place starting position for the reverse-grid final encounter, and the 36-year-old gained three places on the opening lap through the first sequence of corners to find himself in second.

Once again battling with Hill, Rowbottom took the lead exiting the complex on the second lap with a superb switchback manoeuvre on Hill, and he led the remainder of the race to claim more than one race win in a season for the first time in his BTCC career.

“It was good – the car has been great all day but we’ve just not quite had the balance I needed to do what we just did,” explained Rowbottom to TouringCars.Net after the race. “We made a few teaks after race two and that’s the result – the guys at NPAA Racing UK did a great job.

“We’ve had a good car all day. If I’m honest, I do that move [on Hill in race three] quite a lot – I don’t know why people haven’t picked up on it! It works really well, it catches people off guard and as it’s such a short distance between the two, you can’t help but overtake people.”

Rowbottom believes that, despite losing ground to team-mate Sutton and Team Vertu’s Ingram in the championship battle and being 49 points adrift of the top of the table, he should be considered as a leading title contender this season.

“We’ve struggled to find a rhythm, but now we’re there. We’ve worked really hard over the winter my crew and I – Paul Ridgeway, my engineer, and Dave, my No. 1 mechanic, they’ve worked really closely together, and I think finally we’re there.

“In the first year [with Team Dynamics] we were third leaving Oulton Park and then it went a little bit sideways when we got to Knockhill which was a shame because we had good rhythm then. But I definitely feel like we’re back where we were then.”

Rowbottom is planning to approach the next event at Oulton Park with a strategic eye, given the return of the option tyre and his reduction in TOCA Turbo Boost from seven seconds to five seconds per lap for qualifying.

“We’ve got the option tyre and we’ve got hardly any turbo boost in qualifying, so we’ve got to think about all these things. Ultimately, we’ve just got to play this game.

“I’ve said this a lot now – I love to win races, which is great – but I want a championship out of my time in BTCC, and I don’t really care how we win it.

“If we finish fourth for the rest of the year in every single race and we win the championship I’d be quite proud of that.”