Michael Caine admitted he had “fallen out of love” with the British Touring Car Championship before he returned to racing behind the wheel of a Motorbase Performance Ford at Silverstone last weekend.
Caine, who stepped in after Nic Hamilton was forced to pull out due to budget issues, enjoyed a competitive weekend at the Northamptonshire circuit; with a best result of 12th in race two.
He told TouringCars.Net he “loved every minute” of his BTCC return, and credited the Motorbase squad for their faith in him at such short notice.
“It’s been brilliant, I’ve loved every minute of it,” said Caine.
“I can only thank Motorbase really, because they’ve just made it very enjoyable.
“I’d actually fallen out of love with touring cars – if you’d have asked me six weeks ago if I ever wanted to come back and do it – I’d have said no.
“But the guys have made it a great weekend. We thoroughly enjoyed it, we’ve been up there.
“Obviously we didn’t really make the right choice in staying out on the slicks but at one point we were sixth or seventh and the car felt great.
“So the weather did what the weather did and we sort of hung on and didn’t crash!”
One of the highlights of Caine’s weekend was qualifying only three tenths adrift of Jason Plato’s pole time despite being forced to carry 45kg of ballast aboard his Ford Focus RS.
Caine admitted he is unsure whether he will be at the season finale at Brands Hatch for Motorbase’s home round, but hopes he can race there and continue progressing.
“We were three tenths off with 45 kilos, and we looked at the data and it was literally just on the straights.
“I’ve just loved every minute of it. I’m not sure what’s going to happen, I’m not sure whether I’ll do Brands [Hatch] but hopefully we’ve done alright and we can do it.
“I’d like to progress and everything like that. We’ve all just been laughing at the moments we were having on the slicks, it was just great fun.”