Celtic Speed's Rory Butcher dominated qualifying on Saturday at Croft to take both pole positions for rounds nine and ten of the Porsche Carrera Cup GB championship. He took his first overall Carrera Cup pole position by posting the fastest time of anybody, and followed that up two laps later with the fastest second-best time to make it the perfect session.
Butcher said: “It's such a good feeling. The team has worked so hard for this.” The driver took both poles in a dry qualifying session, but remained unphased by the threat of rain for the first race, later in the afternoon on Saturday. “I'll just drive to whatever conditions come today.”
Second place for both grids was claimed by Jonas Gelzinis of Juta Racing, who ran strongly throughout the session. That was in stark contrast to third-placed man Michael Meadows who started the session in style, yet finished with disaster for his team Redline Racing. When Meadows went back out with ten minutes remaining, his team-mate Glynn Geddie slid off the track in front of him.
As Meadows backed off, he was collected by Yucel Ozbek in another of the Redline Racing cars. “It was all going quite nicely until then.” said a disappointed Meadows. His team was left with the thankless task of trying to repair three cars in less than two hours in time for the first race of the weekend and round nine of the championship.
Fourth place for both races went to Daniel Lloyd, ahead of the aforementioned Geddie and Sam Tordoff of Team Parker Racing. That was an especially disappointing result for Redline's Geddie, as he had a car which he felt could have taken pole.
The Pro-Am1 class was headed by Al Harthy who attacked the times on his second set of tyres. He said of his session: “I was a bit cautious on my first set [of tyres] and then we had to push. I got two very good laps on my second set.” That late run pushed Al Harthy's team-mate Victor Jimenez off of the top of the times.
Third place in both races went to Oly Mortimer for GT Marques who had a hairy moment at the exit of the chicane when he spun the car. The Pro-Am2 class was yet closer, when Tautvydas Barstys was pipped to pole by Goff Racing's namesake driver with a margin of just 0.088 seconds.