Daniel Lloyd produced a battling performance on track at Snetterton to pick up his first silverware of the 2023 Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship season.
The Huddersfield racer headed into the weekend on the back of a triple points score at Brands Hatch in the previous meeting, and hopeful of strengthening his position in the top three of the Independents’ standings.
Quickest of the Team HARD-run Cupra Leons throughout free practice, Daniel qualified 15th on the grid for the opening race of the weekend despite being one of a number of drivers to suffer a high-speed trip off track on oil dropped on the circuit at Coram.
That left him in a solid position going into the opening race, where Daniel elected to run the less favourable hard compound tyre at the first opportunity.
Despite being the slowest of the three options drivers had to run, Daniel would rebound from losing spots on lap two while fighting for position to recover to 15th place and pick up the final championship point.
Bolting on the soft tyre for race two, Daniel was in fine form as he made up four places on the opening lap before fighting ahead of Aron Taylor-Smith mid-way through the race to take a first top-ten finish of the campaign – and the Independents’ class win.
More points were there for the taking in race three on the medium tyre, but contact from Taylor-Smith at the Bombhole mid-way through lap one saw Daniel forced off onto the grass, where he managed to regain control after a lurid slide and rejoined at the back of the field.
Getting his head down, Daniel charged back through the pack and looked set to somehow recover into the points until contact from the Toyota of Ricky Collard on the final lap dropped him back to 17th place.
Ahead of the next round at Thruxton in two weeks time, Daniel sits 17th overall and third in the Independents’ Trophy.
“Overall it’s been a really positive weekend and we have shown strong pace with the car,” he said. “We were a bit in the dark coming into the weekend with the tyres, as we only had a little bit of running on the soft, and didn’t know what the hard tyre would be like at all.
“I feel we did a good job to hold position with the hard tyre and then made up ground with the soft, and I think the speed was really strong on the medium tyre. I really fancied us for a top-six finish with the pace in the car, and without the contact on lap one, I’m sure we’d have got one.
“Even after that, I managed to close back onto the pack and get back up towards the points before the second contact, so there is a lot of encouragement from the race despite the disappointment of not getting the result.
“I had a new engineer this weekend in the shape of Tom Hunt, who was previously with Team Dynamics, and I feel we did a mega job with the car. We’ve taken a big step forward, and it’s great to now be in a position where we can score our first Independents’ win of the season.
“I think we’ve found the sweet spot with the set-up this weekend as we have shown with our pace, even if we are still struggling a bit with straight-line speed. We’ve just got to remember that we had no pre-season testing, so to now have a trophy is great, and we have the car in a position where I’m confident we can go into the upcoming rounds and only need to tweak it rather than make lots of radical changes to get it in the window.
“Having picked up a trophy, hopefully there are going to be plenty more to come.”
