What a weekend Celtic Speed had at Rockingham – even the ducks were running for cover at one point as the heavens opened and Rockingham filled up.
What a weekend – even the ducks were running for cover at one point as the heavens opened and Rockingham filled up. But there was still racing to be done and I (Rory Butcher) was delighted with the drive that earned me a second place in round 16 of the Porsche Carrera Cup GB. It was great to have achieved all that, but credit as well to Ben Barker for the double win, he really mastered those very tricky conditions.
It had been a challenging weekend right from the start. The whole Celtic Speed team had gone to Rockingham with plenty of confidence after the podium at Knockhill. But we struggled to get the speed in practice. In fact we were down in eighth in the dry in the first session and ninth in the wet in session two. We were all scratching our heads because we weren’t sure why we were so far down the field, but Celtic Speed has grown a lot and the guys are determined not to let anything beat them.
We were still confident we could do a good job in qualifying. I felt confident and the car was working really well compared to Friday practice, I could tell on my first hot lap that we were going to be at the sharp end. Three clean laps later and I had secured third place on the grid for both races.
That gave us a real chance of good points in both races, but we knew the track was abrasive and hard on tyres. We didn’t score at all at Rockingham last year because of punctures, so I knew we still had to be careful.
The first race was dry and I didn’t get the best of starts, but I battled back into third and it all seemed to be going well. However I made a small mistake on lap four which allowed Michael Meadows and Andy Meyrick past. I was then under a lot of pressure from James Sutton for the remainder of the race but I held on to take fifth. We had a finish and we had to be happy with that considering our bad luck recently.
Then the monsoon came for race 2. It was really bad out there, with lots of standing water. There was heavy rain throughout the whole race so grip was not great and the visibility was awful. It was so tough to try to make an attack because you just couldn’t see anything when up and close to the car in front. But I got a good start and got past championship leader Michael Meadows at turn two and then chased down Ben Barker, but he with stood the pressure really well. Ben and I started pulling clear and worked up a nine-second gap over the rest as we crossed the finish.
I was delighted with the result as we managed to take points out of everyone bar Ben and am sitting in fifth in the championship. But it is very, very tight as Ben is second and he is just 21 points ahead. A few good results could move us further up the field.
I was happy when I left Rockingham because it was another circuit where we had improved on last year’s performance, but I would still have liked a podium in race one. That’s racing though, we always want more!
Rory.
© Celtic Speed 2026
