British driver Simon Butler has joined the Michelin Le Mans Cup for the second half of the 2022 season with RLR MSport, racing the no53 Ligier JS P320-Nissan with Germany’s Valentino Catalano at Monza, Spa-Francorchamps and Portimão.
The 42-year-old from Hampshire in England has raced for many years in historics, competing in Jaguar C-Type, E-Types, Shelby Mustang GT350s and Vector MG95s and has decided to try his hand at some modern cars in the form of a Le Mans Prototype.
Simon Butler does have one unique attribute and that is his day job as a Church of England vicar. This is the first time a member of clergy has raced in the Michelin Le Mans Cup, so we caught up with Simon at Monza to talk about his background and his goals for the final three races of the season.
Q: Like many bronze drivers on the MLMC grid, you have a day job but yours is pretty unique. Can you tell us a bit about what you do when you are not racing?
So, I'm a vicar in the Church of England, I look after a group of 12 rural parishes in northeast Hampshire, part of the Diocese of Winchester. I've been a vicar for 17 years, so in parish ministry for quite a while.
Q: Do you have a lot of fans within your congregations?
“I think generally people enjoy the fact that that I have a slightly unusual kind of alter ego. There's a lot of people in my parishes who are really into cars. So yes, it's something we do enjoy together.
Q: Can you tell us a bit about your racing background? And how you sort of balance that with your commitments as a Church of England vicar?
I’ve raced mainly historics for the last 15 years or so, have all been in historic cars. It's quite an interesting transition from cross ply, treaded tires and cars that want to take off the faster you go to cars that stick (to the track) and use aero properly. So, it's definitely a jump into the LMP3 and balancing it with church work. Historically, a lot of the races are on Saturday's, which is really convenient. I call that divine providence. But for the Le Mans Cup, I'm on a sabbatical. So in the clergy we're very lucky, we get three months off every seven years and my bishop has very kindly allowed me to take it in chunks of a week. So, I can take off a week at a time to go racing, which is great.”
Q: So why did you choose to compete in the Michelin Le Mans Cup with RLR MSport?
“Martin Rich has been running with RLR for about five seasons is a very close friend of mine and we race historics together. So, it was mainly Martin's fault he’s been on me for years saying ‘you've got to try an LMP3’ and ‘come and do Le Mans Cup’.I got some of the guys a RLR a bit through Martin and they're good at their job. But they're also nice bunch and I think when racing is for fun, it's not my career, you want to do it with people that you like, people that you trust and people that you respect.”
Q: You spent some time with the team before your first race weekend at Monza. How has that helped you with your race weekend?
“If you know, the format of the race weekend, it's one thing off your mind.If know where you need to be and what you need to be doing and how the race weekend works, you can put that to one side and then really concentrate on the driving. I've had very limited testing, I've had an hour in the car before travelling to Monz and I'd never been to Monza before. So, my focus was just getting comfortable in the car, getting to know the circuit and getting to grips with everything that's going on.”
Q: What are your expectations for the rest of the season?
“I think I've tried to have very little expectation. It's about getting comfortable in the car and beginning to trust the car and learning how to drive this particular sort of car in a way that it needs to be driven to go fast. So, if I'm sat in the back of a grid, that's okay. If I'm not at the back of the grid, then that's a bonus. I guess after three or four races, I hope we'll be pushing the midfield, we’ll just have to see.”
Q: We next go to Spa, which we know you have raced at before. What are your thoughts on taking this car to that sort of circuit?
“I think it's going to be an amazing mix of absolutely breathtakingly fast and probably a little bit scary. I think it's nice to be the LMP3 is that they're not out to get you, they are quite nice cars to drive. They're hard to make go really fast, but you can drive at a reasonable pace quite easily. So, I'm not too worried. I you know, have a bit of an advantage. It's fine. I know it well, so Spa should be good fun.”
