Dan Lloyd declared himself ‘absolutely buzzing’ after claiming a first victory in the British Touring Car Championship at Croft yesterday.
The BTC Norlin Racing driver managed to hold off a fast-starting Tom Chilton in the opening exchanges before pushing to extend his advantage.
That would swell to 5.8 seconds at the chequered flag, making Lloyd the 11th different winner of the championship’s 60th Anniversary campaign from the opening 15 rounds.
“I’m just absolutely buzzing – I did not see this coming at all,” Lloyd admitted to TouringCars.net afterwards.
“The first thing was keeping the lead – that was the most important thing.
“From then on, I was going to push very hard at the start. Tom, to start with, was keeping with me, and all I was hoping was that he was pushing hard as well – I didn’t know if he was pacing it or if he was pushing – so I just kept pushing every lap and he started to drop off so I thought I’m OK which gave me a bit more confidence going ahead.
“I was really struggling as well [with the tyres]. After race one we struggled even worse, so I took a lot from race one and analysed the data and knew what I had to do, so it was nice having a bit of a gap, so you could use a higher gear and not push as much pressure on the tyres.
“It goes from strength to strength when you get that gap and you can keep it going.”
Misfortune has dogged Lloyd’s steps in the category in the past. When quizzed whether the victory felt like proving his ability to the paddock and the wider public, Lloyd admitted in some senses that feeling is true.
“Whether its budget that we’ve had to move, or going to a team where you think it’s a front-runner and we’re at the back, or here two years ago when I showed I had the pace but couldn’t make it happen,” he said.
“So yeah, in a way I think I do have something to prove. I’ve done it in other championships but haven’t done it here, and I feel like obviously we got the reverse grid, but I feel like we did it very well.
“The biggest thing, like I’ve said before, is that it’s only my fourth day in the car. We haven’t had a test – I haven’t even done a shakedown before these two rounds.
“We haven’t had time to test – we’re doing our testing here even throughout race day, so a good day’s testing would do us a whole lot of good.
“I think the next step forward is to develop the car for me a bit more and then that will put us in a good position for qualifying. A huge thanks to the Norlin team who worked so hard and its great to repay them with this.”
Lloyd’s next engagement comes at the TCR UK event at Castle Combe on July 14-15 before the BTCC resumes following a six-week summer break at Snetterton on July 28-29.