Can the BTCC's underrated Toyota ace stake his claim to a title?

“Don’t make it sound like I’m bigging myself up,” pleads Rory Butcher at the end of a cosy chat with Autosport on the eve of the 2023 British Touring Car Championship kicking off this weekend at Donington Park.

He’s probably going to hate that we’ve quoted his throwaway line, but the point is that, if there was a BTCC points table for drivers bigging themselves up, then Butcher would comfortably occupy 27th place out of 27. The Scot is a chap who’s as modest as they (usually don’t) come, but just happens to love driving racing cars – and he’s very, very good at it.

This is a crucial year for the 36-year-old and the Speedworks Motorsport-run Toyota team, one to move from their traditional spot on the fringes of title contention into the thick of it. After his nomadic early BTCC years from 2017-20, Butcher is entering his third season with the Cheshire squad and its Corolla GR Sport. Speedworks itself has expanded from two cars to three, adding the promising George Gamble to the incumbent duo of Butcher and Ricky Collard.

For the first time, the team has ditched the TOCA customer engine in favour of a bespoke Toyota powerplant produced by BMW and Honda supplier Neil Brown Engineering. And all this has been made possible by the investment of long-time Speedworks supporter John Gilbert, who over the winter became what team boss Christian Dick describes as “a sizeable shareholder” in the company formerly owned outright by Dick and his wife Amy.

“You know how competitive this championship is, so you don’t ever walk into it confident that you’re going to get it done, but what I can say is that we are better prepared with what feels like the stars aligning for us to be able to have a good crack at it,” enthuses Dick.

“Rory’s in a great position, Ricky had some bad luck last year but his outright pace was mega and he learned a lot about front-wheel drive, so he should be in a great position to capitalise on that, and of course George is new to us, new to front-wheel drive, but I’ve got high hopes for him and think he’s going to spring a few surprises. This is probably our best chance yet of getting it done. It feels very fresh, almost like there’s a renewed energy and vigour.”

Butcher finished fifth in the standings last year, but team boss Dick is confident of improvement this term

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Dick is at pains to point out that all three of his drivers have equal status and opportunity within the team, but the focus from outside is unquestionably on Butcher. The man himself gives a self-deprecating laugh about his regular hold upon fifth spot in the final standings – three times in four years, with three different cars and teams – but there’s a sense that this could be building to something much better. The ‘blip’ year (seventh in points) was 2021, his first with Speedworks in a Toyota that had very much been developed around the unique, hustling driving technique of the departing Tom Ingram.

“When you look back at my career, the first four seasons, I did a half-year with Motorbase, two years with AmD Tuning, and then I returned to Motorbase,” he recounts. “It was with four different cars [two models of Ford Focus at Motorbase; the MG6 and Honda Civic Type R FK2 at AmD], and I was chopping and changing between different people and this different machinery.

“And then to move to Speedworks it was kind of a difficult transition, because I was so familiar with Motorbase. The team were great, and Christian and Amy were fantastic – it was probably just getting my head around the car. Tom’s now become a champion, he’s a top driver, but he has a very distinct driving style, and I think getting my head around that and developing the car around me took a little bit of time.

"What I think we’ve got with the new Toyota is it’s kind of almost like a finished article. It’s good in every area and straight out of the box it’s there" Rory Butcher

“But by the end of 2021, pole position came at Silverstone, we got our first wins, and we ended the season really high. And I think if we didn’t have some of the engine troubles that we had in the first half of 2022, it might have looked a lot different because the consistency was still there. We were still bagging top-sixes, we just didn’t have the pace to go for the wins and the podiums. But the last nine races of 2022 we were the top scorer, and finished on the podium five times.”

The ‘engine troubles’ to which Butcher refers are the switch of supply of the TOCA powerplant from Swindon to M-Sport, whose product left its frontrunning users underwhelmed (BTC Racing publicly, Speedworks subtly).

“I think the team had a really good mentality,” he points out, “where it was, ‘We’re putting a lot of pressure on M-Sport to develop an engine and prove the areas that were weak’, but at the same time we didn’t say, ‘Well that’s it, they’re going to get better, we’ve done our job.’ It actually made us work even harder to get the chassis better, and I would say that from Snetterton [in August], after the tyre test, the car just went onto a different league in terms of the chassis, and you could see that in the pace.”

At the same time, Gilbert’s process to buy into Speedworks was ongoing, and the emboldened team was discussing a Toyota engine supply with NBE.

“John coming in and taking the shares has obviously brought some cash into the business that’s allowed us to reinvest – that’s expanding the BTCC programme and finally having that up-front investment to do our own engine programme, which is very exciting,” explains Dick.

Speedworks have a bespoke engine programme for the first time this year courtesy of Neil Brown Engineering

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

“John ran a very successful car warranty insurance business of his own for a long time, and has been involved with Speedworks for probably over 10 years. And then in recent years he sold his business and retired from that, and really things developed from there in terms of our relationship and his involvement. He’d got more time to spend with his passion of motorsport and would come and visit the workshop regularly.

“Amy and I got to a point with the business where we could either shrink it back down to a more manageable size and try and do less, which seemed criminal when we looked at the opportunities that we’d got in front of us, or we needed more resource and more advice of how to take advantage of those opportunities and to grow the business.

“With John’s input, that’s meant that we’re able to take on more staff [now 16 full-time, 60 on race weekends], our management team has grown, and that’s taken a lot of responsibilities from both Amy and me, allowing us to focus more on the areas that we do, whether that be future projects and looking at different avenues for the business to explore, right the way through to sponsorship opportunities that we can try and grow. Not necessarily new business and new revenues coming in, but growing the ones that we’ve already got. So there’s lots of areas that it’s a real positive for.”

The Toyota engine – which comes from the Supra model – first hit the track last month with a two-day shakedown and early testing at Anglesey. What does Butcher make of it?

“At the end of the day, these regulations are extremely tight, so there’s not a huge advantage to be found in the engine, but what I think we’ve got with the new Toyota is it’s kind of almost like a finished article. It’s good in every area and straight out of the box it’s there. It’s not that we needed something that was going to find us half a second – we were already winning races and on the front row. We just needed something that was going to give us the ability to be there at the first round and I feel confident that we will.”

The other positive for Speedworks this year is continuity on the engineering side. Upon Ingram’s departure over the winter of 2020-21, he took Spencer Aldridge with him to the Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai squad. The Dicks recruited veteran tin-top technician Paul Ridgway for 2021, when he worked with Butcher. For 2022, Butcher’s former Motorbase engineer Rich Benton became available and they were reunited, with Ridgway moving into overall responsibility on the technical side and looking after Collard. Butcher and Benton remain together for 2023.

The key, as ever in motorsport, is for those guys to develop a car to suit their drivers. As with Ingram, Butcher has a very particular style – it’s just that they’re polar opposites. While Ingram is spectacular to watch and likes a very darty car, Butcher has a smooth, classical approach that betrays his pre-BTCC career as a very promising GT driver who came close to a class title in the 2016 European Le Mans Series. You almost want to drag him out of these cumbersome front-wheel-drive devices and plonk him in a nice, sophisticated GT3 racer. But the guy just loves being in the BTCC.

Deficiencies in the M-Sport engine Speedworks used last term prompted extra focus on the chassis which Butcher feels has reaped rewards

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

“The opportunity came up in 2017 because of my link to Motorbase in British GT,” recalls Butcher. “David Bartrum [Motorbase boss] needed someone to replace Luke Davenport, who was unfortunately injured, and so he put me in the car for the last four rounds. And to be honest it was really refreshing coming back to the UK with sprint races, standing starts, having a gear-shifter again, and the cars are so raw compared to a GT car, which is so refined.

“I’d love to go and race in GTs again, but I think touring cars just kind of captured me, especially being able to race at Knockhill. Being able to race at home is pretty special and I just love going back there every year. Certainly for the near future I’ll be in touring cars, until I can win a championship.”

The Knockhill link, of course, is almost umbilical since Butcher’s father Derek owns the track and his sister, ex-racer Jillian (who is married to Gordon Shedden), runs it. The temptation is to assume that a racing life was ingrained in young Rory from infancy, but that’s not the case.

He says: “I did a little bit of motorbike racing when I was 12, 13 years old [yikes!], but I didn’t drive a race car until I was 18 [he made his debut in a humble Ford Fiesta XR2]. Back then it was a different sport. It’s not like now where kids are in a formula car for 100 days before they do their first race.

"I think [Butcher] is one of the most underrated drivers on the grid. You’ll struggle to find anyone who works harder and is more dedicated to their craft" Christian Dick

“Literally it was club racing and at the time it was just a hobby – it was only a couple of years later when I’d had a bit of success and got a bit of sponsorship, my eyes were opened to, ‘Right, we can maybe make a career out of it.’ I didn’t actually believe I could race at a national level, but just one thing led to another and before you knew it…”

From success in Formula Ford 1600, Butcher took the Carrera Cup path into GTs, and perhaps this is the root of that smooth driving style.

“I think I’m quite smooth, but I try and take little bits…” he mulls. “For example, I’m happy to take a bit of technique from Ricky who’s come from a single-seater background and done GTs as well. I would take a bit of technique off Ingram as well if it’s going to make me quicker. So I just try and adapt as much as I can around the circuit and piece together a bit of a jigsaw puzzle.

“I’ve been lucky enough to drive a lot of different cars; I’ve not come up through the front-wheel-drive route. I’ve done some single-seaters, I’ve done GT cars. I’ve driven cars with aero, so there are a few different things you can bring out of your toolbox.”

An apprenticeship served in GT racing helped shape Butcher's smooth, classical style

Photo by: Ebrey / Motorsport Images

Make the same point to Dick, and he bubbles: “You have hit the nail on the head. I was out corner-watching at a test we did at Brands recently, and I’m sat watching the times from the outside of Surtees, watching him go round, and it looks effortless. The car’s not moving around and yet he’s flashing up really quick times. Some people really have to wrestle and hustle the car around, and whether that comes from the car set-up that they prefer or just their driving style… He’s incredibly smooth.

“I’m a mega fan. I think he’s one of the most underrated drivers on the grid. You’ll struggle to find anyone who works harder and is more dedicated to their craft. When we sit down and analyse weekend to weekend or even season to season, any area that you put to Rory that you say needs improving, he will find that improvement. Absolutely guaranteed – he’ll find a way of doing it, he’ll work really hard to make sure that he delivers, and consistently delivers on it.

“He’s the biggest team player that I’ve ever worked with. All drivers have egos and if they tell you they haven’t then they’re lying, but he manages to park that ego, and if someone in the team has gone quicker on that lap or in that sector then he’ll absorb that information and try and make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

“But he’s also very open to sharing his data and talking other drivers through where he’s found that. The amount of effort he puts in to being the best he can be, he’s more than capable of getting the job done.”

Long-term, who knows? Thanks partly to Gilbert’s investment also shoring up Speedworks’ GT programme, the team and Butcher have their eye on the Toyota GT3 project that, it is anticipated, will be on track in 2025.

“We desperately want to be part of that when it comes along,” asserts Dick.

“I’d love to be around then to get an opportunity,” grins Butcher. “I think I might end up in the [GT4] Supra at some point this year for an endurance race, but we’ll see what happens.”

But for now, all eyes are on the BTCC.

“I probably felt like I could fight for a championship three years ago [in the Motorbase Ford] but I just wasn’t ready, and you learn from your mistakes,” considers Butcher. “I feel like last year was great, because we pieced together 29 points-scores in a row, and consistency really is a key in this series. We just need to have a stronger first half of the year, and I think we’ll have a really good shot of fighting for it.”

And then we’ll all be bigging him up.

Butcher is highly-rated by his team and appears to have his best chance yet of the title in 2023

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

A Gamble that could pay off

George Gamble impressed a lot of people in his rookie BTCC season with the Ciceley Motorsport BMW squad last year. After a couple of seasons out of motorsport, the 26-year-old ex-Carrera Cup GB ace from Nottingham scored a podium on his debut weekend on home ground at Donington, and claimed his maiden race victory during the summer in the reversed-grid race at Knockhill.

But with Ciceley canning its BTCC programme, and the team’s Adam Morgan claiming the only available rear-wheel-drive seat at official BMW squad West Surrey Racing, that left Gamble looking at a change of direction: a competitive front-wheel-drive car, which he has (hopefully) found with the Speedworks Toyota line-up.

“We had a great situation last year, and I still get on really well with Adam and Russell Morgan [Adam’s father is the Ciceley boss], but unfortunately they decided they wanted to step back from all the pressures of running a team,” recounts Gamble. “So it did leave my options a bit more narrowed onto front-wheel drive.

"Touring cars I don’t think is a one-year gig; it takes anyone two or three years before they really have a good result" George Gamble

“It is a different style obviously, so I think it might be a bit of a slow start for that last couple of tenths to Rory [Butcher] maybe, but after a couple of rounds I’m really confident that we’ll get the feel for it and be able to put in some really good results. It’s like anything, isn’t it? It just takes a bit of track time, and we’ve been a bit limited with the weather and one thing and another.”

What is significant is that, even with front-wheel drive the only option and his younger brother Tom being a factory McLaren driver in GT3, Gamble has chosen to stick with the BTCC.

“I put such groundwork into it last year and we were kind of all geared up for it to roll over,” he says. “All the sponsors had such a great time, I loved it, all the press and everything just works for the British Touring Cars and I didn’t want to come out of that.

“Touring cars I don’t think is a one-year gig; it takes anyone two or three years before they really have a good result. Obviously I’ve had a team switch in the middle of that, but I think there’s still no reason why we can’t have a really strong year. It’s not a championship you can just walk in and expect to have results from. I’m quite respectful of that and just looking to build on last year.”

Can Gamble make a successful transition to front wheel drive after a promising rookie year in the RWD BMW?

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images