Butcher stays in Toyota line-up
Amid the flurry of the British Touring Car Championship silly season, official Toyota team Speedworks Motorsport had stayed conspicuously silent. The squad was one of three to be granted the loan of an additional TBL entrants’ licence from series organiser TOCA to potentially allow a three-car line-up of Corollas, but little information was leaking from its Cheshire workshop.
It was always known that the team wanted its three-times-in-2021 race winner Rory Butcher to stay on, and why wouldn’t it? But then clandestine rumours of a very big name signing began – and drifted away again on the wind.
What we know for sure is that Butcher is secure. This was announced on Tuesday, and remarkably represents the first time that the Scot will stay in the same car as he campaigned the previous season. He took time to get to grips with the Toyota in 2021, but once he had done so he was one of the late-season form men, and took seventh in the championship.
“Rory is the first to admit to taking a little time to get his head around things, and it was the first time we’ve worked with a new driver in a long time,” said
Speedworks chief Christian Dick. “Once we worked that out and understood each other better, the results started to come.
“There’s still work to come that’s exciting because we know we’re in a good place as a baseline. That reinforces our positivity. We can’t wait to get out into testing and the season starting.”
Speedworks, of course, operated the test ‘mule’ Corolla with the new-for-2022 hybrid from Cosworth and the development M-sport-built TOCA customer engine. Is that an advantage? “You’ve got to say a small amount, but probably not as much as people think,” said Dick. “TOCA and Cosworth were very fair, and we had no access to the data, but you do start to understand what’s required and get a feeling for it.”
And what about the other drivers? Autosport sources have suggested two contenders, both of whom have strong GT pedigree but have yet to contest a full BTCC season, for the second car. Dick was staying schtum on that, but did confess to reports that Nicolas Hamilton could pilot the third Toyota. He said that “the third car is a possibility”, and that “we’ve been speaking to Nic a lot – I would love to put something together for him”.