Rory Butcher: ‘The car’s been a pleasure to drive all day’

Rory Butcher says his Toyota Corolla has ‘been a pleasure to drive all day’ after he topped every single session in the British Touring Car Championship at Silverstone on Saturday.

Butcher was fastest in both parts of qualifying, although on neither occasion by a huge margin – in Q1 the Scot was just 0.069 seconds faster than BMW’s Colin Turkington, and in Q2 he was a mere 0.016 seconds faster than Excelr8 Motorsport’s Tom Ingram.

Even more impressive was the fact that Butcher posted the fastest times, including in first and second practice, whilst suffering from back pain.

“I’ve got a really sore back,” said Butcher after the session. “When I got out of the car in FP1, I was like ‘oh’, and it’s just got worse all day.

“It’s fine when I’m in there, which is fortunate, and thankfully the car has been really kind to me, because it’s just been a pleasure to drive all day.

“We’ve kind of built into this season and developed the car more around me and since Oulton Park it’s just been a total change for me.

“At Croft I felt like we could potentially have had a pole position, but it wasn’t to be with the engine failure.

“Today I was like ‘who cares about that, let’s focus on each session as it comes, get the most out of myself and get the most out of the car’. It was a little bit close at the end, but we did it.”

Butcher added that he was pleased to be able to bag pole without relying on a slipstream, as he suspected that some of his rivals might have been targeting tows around the Silverstone National circuit.

“I don’t know what everyone else did, but I know that a tow around here is worth a good couple of tenths of a second and I would have love to have had a tow because it would have made it easier.

“I think if everyone else had a tow and I didn’t then it’s great but I’m sure there’ll be other people out there who didn’t manage to get a tow, like myself.

“But I’m on pole – I don’t care!”