Rory Butcher admits replicating Silverstone form ‘will obviously be difficult’

Rory Butcher heads to Donington Park for this weekend’s penultimate British Touring Car Championship round in a confident mood, despite admitting that it will be ‘difficult to replicate’ his Silverstone double win.

Toyota’s Butcher was the form driver in the championship last time out at Silverstone, claiming a pole position and double win to give him his best weekend of the season thus far.

Although Donington Park is a venue where Butcher has never previously won, he secured his first BTCC podium at the circuit last year and immediately followed it up with another visit to the rostrum in race two, claiming second.

Given his recent form, combined with a strong track record for the Toyota Corolla at the Derbyshire circuit, Butcher heads to Donington in an optimistic mood.

“I’m feeling really positive going to Donington,” said 34-year-old Butcher. “It will obviously be difficult to replicate what we did at Silverstone, but I’m confident we will be able to fight up at the sharp end again.

“If we can get ourselves into the top five in qualifying, that will put us in a great position for race day.

“We’ve made so many changes to the Corolla over the course of the season based upon what I need from it, and at Croft everything finally came together.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t get to show it there due to the engine failure in qualifying, but we certainly made amends at Silverstone. That felt like a weekend that had been coming for a long time.

“I’m approaching Donington the same way – just focussing on getting the very most out of myself and the car – and hopefully we can start off in FP1 with a set-up that allows me to really push, and after that just make small tweaks throughout the weekend.

“I wouldn’t say it’s my favourite track on the calendar, but I’ve done quite well there in previous years and I think the Corolla’s strengths should be well-suited to the nature of the circuit.

“Points and trophies are very much the target, and I think we stand a good chance. The guys and girls at TMUK [Toyota Motor Manufacturing UK] are putting in so much hard work back at the factory, and we will do our utmost to make them proud this weekend.”

Team Principal Christian Dick says that Butcher’s double win at Silverstone has lifted the team for the final events of the 2021 campaign.

“After the understandable disappointment of Croft, our performance and results at Silverstone gave everybody a real lift and validated all the hard work that every single member of this team has put in this season – I genuinely can’t praise them all enough,” added Dick.

“It has inevitably taken a while to adapt the Corolla to Rory and Sam [Smelt]’s individual requirements, but the pace they have both displayed in recent events demonstrates that we are really in a sweet spot with the car right now.

“As TMUK’s home track, Donington is an important event for us and it is somewhere we have always gone well, winning there every year from 2017 to 2019 and coming away with three top six finishes last season.

“With the form that Rory and the Corolla are currently in, I think we have every reason to feel very confident of another strong points-scoring weekend, especially given that we will still be relatively light on ballast compared to our main competitors.”