The first visit of the British Touring Car Championship to the Rockingham Motor Speedway circuit in Northants, proved to be an eventful one for Gavin Pyper. The Scot left with the circuit with his Independents points lead intact after taking second in class in the opening race of the day, but sustained damage to his GA Motorsports Vauxhall Astra that saw him retire from the second 25-lap race.

Rockingham features an unusual circuit layout that sees the cars use part of a bank high-speed oval circuit before entering a tight and twisty ‘infield’ section. Pyper lined up his Team Dynamics-backed Astra tenth on the grid for the opening race, and was running comfortably inside the BTCC top ten for the early laps. A superb pit stop from the GA Motorsports crew saw him take the Independents Cup lead, but then a clash with a works car drastically altered his race - and his weekend.

“We were running well in the first half of the race,” explained 23-year-old Pyper, “but then one of the Protons braked mid-corner in a strange place and I had no option but to hit him! That damaged the engine and the radiator, it started overheating, and from then on wasn’t working too well. The team had done a wicked pit stop to get me out in the lead of the Independents. In the second half of the race, I think all the contact had also knocked the set-up out, and we just had to finish.

“The GA Motorsport guys had done a great job to change the engine between the races. Unfortunately, because of all the hard contact in the first race, something at the back of the car started coming loose in the second, then something at the front gave up and I was out.

“I don’t really think we got our heads round this weekend. I’m sure we’ll go back up to Croft and we’ll be right back where we have been all year. We need to look at all the areas that went wrong this weekend and make them better for Croft. It’s a case of forgetting about this meeting, getting back to a proper circuit, and racking up some more points.”