CPRL’s Daniel Rowbottom felt that he should have left Silverstone with more, despite racing to a trio of top ten finishes in Sunday’s British Touring Car Championship races.

Rowbottom went to the Northamptonshire circuit with 11 seconds of TOCA Turbo Boost per lap, thanks to being to sixth overall in the drivers’ standings.

He showed strong pace early on Saturday, topping the morning’s practice session, but a more challenging afternoon saw him qualify in tenth, three tenths from pole, before falling down the order and finishing the Qualifying Race in 17th after picking up a five-second penalty for exceeding track limits.

That set the tone for Sunday, and despite improving to tenth in race one and sixth in race two, race three presented challenges with both his car handling and windscreen, resulting in a ninth-place finish to conclude his weekend.

“We should have definitely had more out of our weekend, although we’ve scored some OK points,” Rowbottom told TouringCars.Net.

“We came here with limited boost comparatively to where we were a few rounds ago. Our qualifying performance was pretty strong.

“We were fast in practice, we did a good job in the qualifying session but didn’t do a great job in the qualifying race with the track limits penalty.”

Rowbottom was critical of the way the track limits penalties have been handled recently, believing that the current system is not effective.

“I went to review [the penalty] with TOCA and it’s so marginal that it’s disappointing. It’s easy for me to say, because I’m on the receiving end of it, but everybody on this grid now is feeling the pain of the track limits rules.

“We’ve just got to try and find some sense, because when you’ve lost the rear end of the car and you’re sliding, you’re losing time – you’re not gaining time. The fact you’ve gone over the kerb, actually, you’ve not gained any time.

“I don’t know how you do it. It needs some sort of VAR system for motorsport.

“On race day, we worked our way through from the back with a tenth, a fifth and ultimately a ninth in race three.

“We got to the lead pretty quickly in that last race. Until the fog in the windscreen steamed up completely and I couldn’t see a thing, we were looking OK.

“But to be honest with you, we didn’t have the ultimate pace in the car. Ultimately, maybe we could have hung on to a top six, but there was no more in it.

Rowbottom once again praised his long-time sponsor Cataclean, which has ensured that the CPRL Mercedes remain on the grid whilst the team is in administration.

“At the end of the day, we’re still in administration. The race team is still for sale and actively looking for investors.

“The original investor in the business and my long-term partner, Cataclean, has stepped up to continue the team while in administration. If they hadn’t done that, 40 people would have been out of a job.

“They’ve done an amazing job and I don’t think they’ve received a very fair amount of credit, when you look at the comments online.

“The business will be in administration for the foreseeable future. I’m not a director of the business anymore, so I genuinely don’t know any more than that.”