Rory Butcher is best known for winning 11 races during an accomplished British Touring Car Championship career that he elected to pause at the end of 2023. But the amiable Scot, also a handy historic racer who pedalled a Lotus Elan 26R to third in September’s Spa 6 Hours, had also proven himself a force in GT racing before entering the BTCC in 2017.
Butcher still regards his 2016 season with Andrea Bertolini and Rob Smith in the European Le Mans Series with JMW Motorsport as “my favourite ever season of car racing”. The Ferrari 458 GTE he raced that year “just ticks a few more boxes” for Butcher when considering his favourite car nomination than the Honda Civic FK2 he raced to three BTCC wins in 2019. “I just loved every minute of driving the car,” he says.
Butcher singles out for particular praise the 4.5-litre naturally-aspirated V8, which was replaced by a 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8 in the 488, for particular praise.
“What really is amazing about the Ferraris of that era was just the engine note,” he remembers. “It was just a car that would excite you. And then from a driving point of view, it had a really positive front end, it gave great feedback, and also with being mid-engined as well, the balance was great. It had nice aero and the fact that it didn't have ABS actually was a real plus-point for me.”
Butcher had already proven himself as a race-winner in GT3 cars, despite admitting that “I was probably still trying to get my head around ABS”. Two British GT seasons alongside Liam Griffin in Motorbase-run Aston Martins had yielded victories at Oulton Park and Snetterton, but the 458 presented Butcher with a chance to make his name on the international stage.
Following a shootout at Snetterton in 2015, Butcher joined JMW as an FIA silver-graded driver for the final two ELMS races of that year, partnering Smith and Jonny Cocker to third on debut at Paul Ricard before gearbox failure at Estoril, when joined by James Calado, thwarted a race Butcher had led early on.
Returning for the full season in 2016, Butcher has a strong case for stating “we should have won the championship”. Disqualification on a technicality after winning on the road at Silverstone, caused by a non-homologated splitter, hinted at what was to come.
Butcher recalls: “I was at Heathrow and just before the flight took off, I got a message through just saying ‘We've been disqualified' from the team. It turned out the front floor had a gurney missing, so it was just an oversight, but it wouldn't have made any difference to performance. And so we started the round two with zero points…”
The disappointment lit a fire under the trio. After placing second at Imola, they went on a winning run across the four-hour races at Red Bull Ring, Paul Ricard and Spa. With only one race to go at Estoril, the JMW trio had a 20-point advantage over Beechdean Aston Martin drivers Andrew Howard, Alex MacDowall and Darren Turner. That meant a seventh place finish in the eight-car class would do the job.
"What really is amazing about the Ferraris of that era was just the engine note. It was just a car that would excite you" Rory Butcher
“All we needed to do was just basically finish the race,” says Butcher. “As long as we didn't finish eighth, we would have won the championship, but everything went against us.”
The combination of circumstances that denied JMW the title could be fairly described as cruel. Butcher had stormed into the lead early on, before gearbox woes again hit. However, with the Danish Formula Racing Ferrari already out of the running, seventh would do nicely. But it wasn't to be.
Smith was returning to the circuit and slowly approaching the Turn 2 right-hander off the racing line on the inside when he was t-boned by the spinning LMP3 Ligier of Mike Guasch, inflicting race-ending damage to the Ferrari’s left-front corner. A timely second victory for Beechdean, who had inherited the laurels at Silverstone, and JMW's non-finish allowed the all-British crew to snatch the crown.
“You couldn't really have written that story,” Butcher laments. “It was a really weird end to the season.”
Yet he still holds fond memories of a year in which “I walked away feeling a much more professional driver having worked with Andrea”. The Italian was, Butcher recalls, the one who “just glued everything together” and taught him a great deal.
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“He was just a mega team-mate and a mega leader,” explains Butcher. “Because I was inexperienced in comparison to him, I used to just love sitting with the radio, listening to his comments to the team and how he would lead them on his feedback. He was just a great mentor and probably quite pivotal in the way that I moved forward my career. I learned a hell of a lot from him in just one season.”
Promotion to FIA gold status for 2017 nixed opportunities that had been in the pipeline, but there was one more outing in JMW’s GTE-spec 458 at the Silverstone ELMS opener alongside Smith and Jody Fannin before grasping an opportunity to return to the TOCA package he’d supported as a Carrera Cup GB race-winner.
And there was still to be one last hurrah for JMW's venerable 458, which in 2017 was superseded by the 488. A car that had won on its debut in the championship then known as the Le Mans Series in 2011, with Rob Bell and James Walker at Paul Ricard, remained competitive on its swansong at Monza before JMW introduced its 488. With Cocker returning to the team alongside Fannin and Smith, it scored a memorable final victory to bookend a remarkable competition life.
