Daniel Lloyd secured his fourth Independents’ class win of the Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship season as racing resumed at Croft, despite a weekend of hugely conflicting emotions at his home circuit.
Huddersfield racer Daniel went into the weekend keen to strengthen his bid for the Independents’ title at the wheel of his Restart Racing-run Hyundai i30 Fastback N, with confidence high at a venue where he had scored three overall wins in the past.
With new support from JLC Group, Bonkers Competitions, ST-RS Automotive, Ecommerce Intelligence and Ontec Group, Daniel made a strong start to the weekend in North Yorkshire as he lapped comfortably inside the top ten through the two free practice sessions.
Drawn to contest the first group in qualifying, Daniel successfully made it through to the second phase of the session before a fine lap in Q2 saw him secure a place in Q3 for the first time.
Sixth quickest marked his best qualifying performance since the 2022 meeting at the same circuit, but was achieved with concerns about the engine in his car which had started to develop problems as the session progressed.
Work from the team overnight readied the car for race day, although it was soon apparent when the lights went out for race one that the problem hadn’t been fully resolved.
Down on power as a result, Daniel found himself shuffled back down to 14th in the early laps in tricky conditions, but was able to recover his way through to ninth by the finish; a result that saw him secure victory amongst the Independent drivers.
Even though he once again ran the soft compound tyre in race two, the ongoing engine issues meant Daniel was a sitting duck in terms of straight-line speed and slipped back down to 15th place by the finish.
After discussions with the team and the engine builders, it was determined that taking the grid for race three risked irreparable damage to the engine with the difficult decision taken to withdraw, leaving Daniel to watch from the sidelines.
Despite that, he ends the weekend third in the Independents’ standings and is just 22 points off the lead ahead of the next event at Knockhill.
“If Croft was a football match, I’d have said it was a game of two halves!” he said. “The pace in the car through practice was really strong, and we went into qualifying feeling confident that we could make a push for the Quick Six.
“We managed to do that for the first time and to take P6 on the grid was really pleasing, although it was clear by the end of Q3 that there was an issue developing with the engine.
“The team worked on the engine overnight to make sure we were good to go for race one and we managed to come away from it with a top ten finish, even though we didn’t have the outright pace that we’d had on Saturday. Sadly, it only got worse in race two and we struggled to even stay in the points.
“The engine was starting to overheat by the finish and having looked at the data, and considering we were on the hard tyre and it would have been tough to race forwards, we made the decision to park the car rather than risk blowing the engine up.
“It’s a shame that we had the issue on a weekend where there was the real potential to fight for three strong results, but we still managed an Independents’ win to maintain our title challenge with a car that was far from perfect on race day.
“There was some good coverage for my partners across the weekend, and guests from DEVELOP, Heatworks, Technology Desking, Posynergi, ST-RS Automotive and Marc Webb Building all enjoyed being able to watch on trackside.
“I’m confident that with the engine issues fixed for Knockhill, we can look to come out fighting there in a few weeks.”
Daniel’s Vlog on the weekend at Croft will go live on his DLR TV YouTube channel – which can be accessed by the clicking the logo below – at 6pm this evening.
