Daniel Lloyd described qualifying on the front row of the grid for the opening British Touring Car Championship race at Donington Park as ‘amazing’ after the Power Maxed Racing driver struggled with setup issues earlier in the day.
Lloyd had been just 18th and 12th in the first two practice sessions respectively, before finding some improved pace in qualifying.
The Huddersfield racer lifted himself into contention for Q2 with just three minutes remaining in Q1, and then he made further gains in the top ten shootout to secure himself second on the grid for the opening race, just 0.033 seconds behind pole-sitter Gordon Shedden.
To make matters even better for PMR, Lloyd’s team-mate Jason Plato qualified in third, a mere 0.120 seconds further back.
The 29-year-old, who was twice on the podium last time out at Silverstone, believes that he has now found a consistent set up which works for him on his Vauxhall Astra.
“That was amazing,” said Lloyd. “We’ve had a really tough day: P18 in FP1, P12 in FP2. I think we’ve done about 11 flying laps all day.
“The car’s been in the garage as we’ve had issues with the setup, but we’ve really turned that around.
“We were P8 in the first bit of qualifying, then we made more tweaks. It’s really been about chipping away at it and driving the car to its full potential.
“I’m over the moon with a front row start in P2 and we’re on top of the car now, so what a turnaround for a day.”
Lloyd added that his lack of flying laps earlier in the day had been because he and the team were continuing to work on their setup direction.
“To be honest with you, the issue this morning was because we’ve been trying some big things on the car that have been different to Silverstone.
“It was worth the risk because we want to keep moving forward, but those things didn’t work so we reverted back to how we did it at Silverstone.
“It just proves we’re finding something because we’ve gone back to it and we’re doing pretty good!”
Race one is scheduled to get underway at 11:55 BST on Sunday.