BUTCHER OFF THE HOOK AT OFFICIAL BRITISH TOURING CAR TYRE TEST
Motorbase man continues the development of new Ford Focus. By Matt James
March 17 was a long time ago, but that was the last time that the majority of the British Touring Car Championship runners hit the track in anger. After the lockdown period, things returned to some normality last week when the field tackled the category’s annual two-day tyre test and Motorbase Performance’s Rory Butcher was the one with his head held highest of all.
The Motorbase Performance team has probably been the one that has been helped most by the lockdown. It was all hands to the pump for the Kent outfit to prepare its three fourth-generation
Ford Focus machines ahead of the original start of the season.
Butcher was fastest on the opening day at Snetterton when the conditions were more favourable – despite causing a red flag with an electrical issue – while Laser Tools Racing Infiniti Q50 driver and
2017 champion Ashley Sutton topped the running on the second wetter day.
Butcher knows that the extra time to prepare has been a real benefit for Motorbase . “It would have a been a big push for us if we had been going to race at Donington at the end of March,” he says. “The break has given us a time to take stock and we’ve been out testing twice more before we went to Snetterton.
“At Snetterton, the car was as good as I have yet known it, so I was delighted. We weren’t able to work through everything we wanted and we will still have a programme to run through when we get to Donington on August 1-2, but we have a really strong platform.”
BTC Racing Honda Civic Type R racer Tom Chilton said he had used the mixed conditions to get to grips with his new team and machine. “It’s been a really positive couple of the days for the team. We’ve learned a huge amount about the cars. I’ve come away with a good understanding of how the FK8 behaves in the wet and dry,” he said.
After topping the times in that preseason running at Silverstone in March, Tom Ingram took his Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla to third in the times, ahead of Jake Hill’s Mark Blundell Motorsport FK2 Honda Civic. Hill had only run on the opening day.
Team Dynamics posted the fifth best time with Dan Cammish at the wheel, while three-time champion and teammate Matt Neal was left a frustrated 18th.
“We were chasing the changeable weather the whole time,” says Neal. “We went down a wrong path with set-up for me at the beginning of the day, and then it wasn’t dry after that so the times weren’t representative. I was also a little bit nervous, because I had only been in the car once since my mountain bike accident in January.
“I think some in the team were a bit downbeat, but we shouldn’t have been,” Neal adds. “We ran through the programmes we wanted and we didn’t run new wet tyres so we weren’t going to be on the ultimate pace.”
Neal stepped aside from running at the end of the second day to let his son Henry, a racer in the Touring Car Trophy, get some mileage ahead of his potential race return in 2020 and also give him more experience of a modern-day NGTC car.
The title-winning WSR team, which ran champion Colin Turkington and team-mate Tom Oliphant, chose not to run during the opening morning, and that was when the track was at its driest. Team boss Dick Bennetts said, however, that the pair had worked through a preparations programme on parts ahead of the new campaign. Turkington was 26th, while Oliphant was 25th.
Making her debut in the series, Mark Blundell Motorsport Honda Civic
Type R FK2 development driver Esmee Hawkey got her first taste of a BTCC car. She ran in the wetter conditions on the second day and was 27th fastest.
BTCC refugee and ace engineer Mike Bushell was behind the wheel for Team Hard. Despite dropping out of his deal to race for the team in 2020 due to illness – which has subsequently been compounded by financial woe – he was employed for two days to help the team unearth some set-up solutions on the front-wheel-drive car. He posted the 20th best time.