Lloyd had started his Team Hard Cupra Leon from pole position and led the Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N of Tom Chilton, who was soon given a five-second penalty for an out-of-position start.
Butcher, from fifth on the grid, got past the West Surrey Racing BMW 330e M Sport of Adam Morgan on the Craner Curves to move up to fourth in his Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla.
Aron Taylor-Smith was running third at the wheel of his Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra, before on the fourth lap he chiselled an opening on Chilton at the Melbourne hairpin.
Butcher then took advantage of that to demote Chilton by sweeping around the outside of Goddards.
Next time around, Butcher dived down the inside of the Old Hairpin to grab second place off Taylor-Smith, and the gap to leader Lloyd by the end of the lap was 1.791 seconds.
Lloyd was beginning to build on that gap when the safety car emerged, after BMW debris was spread on the track by Jake Hill clouting the tyre stack at the esses – the Kentishman had been tucked up behind Rowbottom and was unsighted by the stack, which had been hit by another car on the previous lap and had moved.
Butcher put Lloyd under immense pressure from the restart, with seven laps of racing remaining.
The Scot would feint moves on the Yorkshireman, but there was never a clear-cut opportunity.
Then, on the final lap, Lloyd suffered driveshaft failure at McLeans, and this pitched him off the road and into the gravel at Coppice.
“I’m gutted, devastated, it just went,” said Lloyd.
“I think it was from hitting a kerb, but it was a kerb I’ve probably hit 100 times this weekend.”
Source: Autosport