Home hero Butcher fastest in opening practice

Home hero Rory Butcher sets a scintillating pace to set the fastest time during the first British Touring Car Championship practice session of the weekend at Knockhill.

The AmD Cobra Sport driver arrives into the eighth weekend of the season as a title contender and ended the opening 40-minute running almost 0.3s faster than fellow compatriot Aiden Moffat in second position.

Butcher stamped his authority early in the session, only for BMW's Andrew Jordan to briefly take the top-spot away from the Scottish driver with just over 10-minutes to go.

However, the Honda runner hit back almost immediately after posting a 50.837s - almost 0.7s quicker than Jason Plato's existing qualifying lap record set during the 2016 season.

Making it a Scotland 1-2, Moffat arguably caused the surprise of the session after putting his Laser Tools Infiniti second on the timesheets in just his third race meeting with the Q50 car.

Team Parker Racing's Stephen Jelley ended FP1 as the fastest BMW runner in the older 1 Series machine in third, while Jordan fell to fourth ahead of an impressive opening effort from substitute driver Mike Bushell in fifth.

Despite FP1 marking his first outing in the Honda Civic Type-R, Bushell immediately looked on the pace as he stands in for Sam Tordoff for this weekend.

Senna Proctor recovered from a small error at turn one to end the session in sixth ahead of Honda runners Josh Cook and Dan Cammish in seventh and eighth.

Ashley Sutton found himself trailing his BMR Subaru team mate in ninth, while Jake Hill completed the top-ten order for the Trade Price Cars Racing outfit in tenth.