Daniel Lloyd was left to reflect on a missed opportunity to put strong early season points on the board after a challenging start to his Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship season at Donington Park.
The Huddersfield-based racer made the trip to the East Midlands circuit keen to play down expectations ahead of his debut at the wheel of his brand-new Team HARD-built Cupra Leon, with only limited running having been available prior to round one.
Despite that, early signs were encouraging as Daniel showed top ten pace in the second practice session on Saturday morning, ending up just behind defending champion Tom Ingram and ahead of a number of fancied runners – including main Independents’ rival Josh Cook.
Come qualifying, which would be run to a two-part format with the fastest ten drivers from Q1 going through to battle for pole, Daniel came agonisingly close to earning a place in the shootout – missing out by just a tenth of a second to end up in P12 as by far the quickest of the Cupra drivers.
Race day would provide a fresh challenge thanks to overnight rain, but Daniel was on form in the slippery conditions in race one to climb into the top eighth within three laps.
A seemingly strong top ten finish would ultimately be taken from his grasp however, when contact at the Old Hairpin forced his Cupra off the road and through the gravel, leaving him back in 19th place and outside the points.
Although the circuit had largely dried by the start of race two, rain would start to fall as the action got underway, with Daniel amongst those drivers to stay on slick tyres in the hope that conditions wouldn’t worsen enough to require a change to wets.
Having climbed to the fringes of the top ten, Daniel was ultimately forced to come in for a tyre change that dropped him back to where he had started, but he was able to then make up ground for a second time to cross the line in 14th place – later being promoted a position due to a penalty elsewhere.
Just missing out on reverse grid pole for race three – which was once again held in the wet – Daniel made another strong start and quickly found himself running up in sixth spot but as the race wore on, he started to suffer with an issue on the car that left him powerless to avoid slipping back down the order to 18th.
Despite the disappointment of missing out on at least two potential top ten finishes, Daniel will look to take the positives from the weekend as focus turns to round two at Brands Hatch in two weeks time.
“It’s largely been a weekend of what might have been,” he said. “Because we hadn’t had much pre-season running, I was keeping my expectations in check so to qualify in P12 and just miss out on the top ten shootout was really encouraging, and it shows the potential that is in the car.
“Race one was going well and I felt confident about bringing home a top ten finish until I was knocked off track, which was really disappointing as it undid all the hard work we’d put in.
“It left us on the back foot for race two and we decided to stay on slicks when things started as conditions were dry. However, there was no option but to come in for wets when the rain arrived during a safety car period which was unfortunate, as dropped us back down the order. Coming through to 13th was a good result, but it almost sums things up that that was one place too low to get the reverse grid.
“The team did some set-up changes for race three and early on we made up good ground but something wasn’t right and we dropped back. We need to have a look at what went wrong there as we couldn’t capitalise on the pace we had in the car, but there are clearly positives to take away from the opening round even if the results might not show it.
“The guests who we had at the circuit from 247 Blinds, DEVELOP, Future Flooring and Greenview Projects had a great time despite the conditions and it’s a long season, so we need to just knuckle down and look forwards to what is to come.”
