Dan Lloyd felt that he could have gone even faster than his result showed in qualifying for the TCR International Series in China, with the Craft-Bamboo Racing driver ultimately securing fifth and sixth for Sunday’s two races respectively.
Having been second fastest in the practice session preceding qualifying, Lloyd went into the session with high hopes of a strong result.
But the Brit struggled with the set-up on his car for much of the session, being at the bottom of the timesheets for most of Q2 before putting in two quick laps at the end of the short ten-minute outing.
Lloyd’s last lap was his quickest and secured him fifth for race one, making him the second-best SEAT driver on the grid and giving him his second-best qualifying result since joining part-way through the campaign.
“P5 is decent, I’m not disappointed with where I am,” said Lloyd to TouringCars.Net. “The only thing I’m disappointed about is that I got caught out in Q2 with the handling of the car.
“All weekend we’ve been really struggling with oversteer, and it’s been something that we’ve been working really hard on getting rid of. In Q1 the car felt mega – it felt really good, but then into Q2 all of a sudden, I had a lot of understeer.
“I had brand new tyres on the rear which induced a lot of understeer, so after working all weekend on the driving style and set-up to try to help it, all of a sudden we had the complete opposite.
“I managed to salvage a lap at the end to put myself in P5, which is decent as it means two good starting positions for tomorrow. It’s good, but I feel like I could have had the car to do something a bit special.”
Lloyd added that he is expecting the new Hyundai i30 N cars, driven by Alain Menu and Gabriele Tarquini, to scythe through the field from their starting positions on Sunday, given the pace they have displayed to-date.
“Race two is probably the better chance, because I think the Volkswagens really do have the edge on us this weekend. But to be honest, I think the Hyundais will come through and possibly even win it, to be honest. They’re stupidly quick in a straight line.
“The Hondas have also been strong everywhere for a while, and they’re still competitive, so I’ll just aim for solid points.”