Daniel Lloyd closed to within two points of the Independents’ Championship lead with a double class win as the Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship season continued at Donington Park.
Huddersfield-racer Daniel was aiming to reduce the gap to his two rivals ahead in the standings during the eighth meeting of the season at a circuit where his Restart Racing-run Hyundai was expected to be strong.
That proved to be the case in practice as Daniel ended the opening practice session of the weekend with the third best time, and he then went even quicker in FP2 – albeit having ended the session in fifth place.
The pace in the car left Daniel confident about fighting for a place in the Quick Six battle for pole but a slightly wrong call on strategy in Q2 as rain started to fall meant he had to settle for tenth on the grid for the opening race of the weekend.
With a focus on race day as a whole, Daniel elected to run the hard compound tyre in race one despite it being the slower option of the two available.
Although that meant he would ultimately lose ground from where he started, 14th overall and second in the Independents’ meant more points on the board ahead of race two, where he was now able to bolt the medium tyre onto the Hyundai.
Following an early caution period, Daniel made the most of a clash ahead to vault up the order and was running inside the top eight when he was one of a large number of drivers caught out by a sudden downpour at McLeans – with most of the top ten going off through the gravel.
It meant Daniel dropped back to eleventh spot, but that still left him as the leading Independent driver home for a maximum score in the standings.
Missing out on the reverse grid draw, Daniel lined up on the sixth row of the grid for race three and despite slipping to twelfth at one stage, he made the most of the pace in the Hyundai to fight his way back into eighth by the time the chequered flag dropped.
That also marked a second class win of the weekend, with Daniel now sitting just two points behind Mikey Doble in the standings and a point ahead of team-mate Chris Smiley with only six races left to run.
Daniel’s Vlog recapping the weekend will be available on his Youtube channel at 6pm on Tuesday.
“It was quite a tough weekend in the end but we’ve ended it on a real positive with two Independents’ wins allowing us to close in on the championship lead,” he said.
“We showed we had strong pace in practice and it was great to be up there in the top five in both sessions, although we were one of the drivers who got caught out a bit by the rain in qualifying which left us out of position on the grid.
“We played the long game with our strategy by getting rid of the hard tyre in race one and it worked in our favour. We managed to grab some points before switching back onto the medium tyre for races two and three, where a double Independents’ win was just what we needed.
“It was a shame that we missed the reverse grid for race three but overall we can be really pleased with the pace we showed this weekend and we’re now only two points off the Independents’ lead with two rounds left where we should be strong.”
