Senna Proctor experiences mixed fortunes during tough BTCC weekend at Donington Park

Saturday saw the 27-year-old from Rudston on his first outing around the Park GP layout and he showed solid free practice pace ahead of the qualifying sessions, so was able to put in a consistently quick set of laps and progressed to Q2. Mixed weather conditions in the second session of qualifying saw ever-changing track conditions as light rain started.

As other teams made early calls to swap to wet tyres, Proctor confidently stayed out on track and in increasingly slippery conditions his warm slick tyres helped him progress to the ‘Quick Six’ fight for pole.

As heavier rain started to fall and conditions got ever more difficult on track, the decision call was to fit wet tyres.

Proctor would end up in P5 after his final push for pole was thwarted as his tyres overheated in ever changing track conditions on the 2.49-mile GP layout.

For Sunday’s race 1 Proctor battled to seventh after picking up early damage to his car that hampered his chances.

The tracking was out after contact with other cars and he drove defending his position and kept at bay drivers attacking and looking to overtake.

Proctor retired on lap one of the second race following a spin-off into the gravel at McLeans.

The challenge then for the team was to assess the extensive damage and launch into the repair work needed in the short time between races.

Team VERTU mechanics then met the very tight time schedule and got their driver back out onto the grid for the final race.

Starting from the back row of the grid, on the slower hard compound tyres, Proctor bagged a highly credible points scoring finishing position to reward the hard work of the team mechanics.

Team VERTU lead the Teams’ Championship by two points, and is just one point off top spot in the Manufacturers’ standings.

Proctor said: “We've had a purple patch of results since I came back onto the grid but this weekend wasn't so kind to us. Saturday was good as we made it to Q3 again in tough conditions and showed we had the pace, but things didn’t happen for us on race day.

“In the first race, the car didn’t quite switch on in the opening laps and then we got a bit of contact at the Old Hairpin that knocked the tracking out.

"Things snowballed from there and after being forced onto the grass in race two, I ended up spinning into the gravel and had the hard tyre to deal with in race three. We managed to salvage a point there, credit to the team for getting me back out after fixing the car in a pretty short amount of time.”

With just two rounds of the season left the next meeting is at the famous Silverstone circuit in Northamptonshire.

All of the races are shown live on ITV4.

Highlights are available on ITVx as well as ITV Sport’s YouTube channel.