Daniel Lloyd scored his best result of the British Touring Car Championship season at Oulton Park, claiming eighth in race two, even though car issues blighted the Team HARD driver’s day in race three.
Lloyd went into the weekend having taken two previous top ten results in 2023 – although on both occasions those results were only tenth.
Having qualified in 15th on Saturday, eight tenths of a second from pole and the second-best CUPRA racer behind Bobby Thompson, who was two tenths quicker in the same Q1 session, Lloyd started race one very much in the mid-pack.
At the start, the 31-year-old gained two places, and although he then dropped down to 14th by the half-way stage of the race, he fought well in the latter stages to take the chequered flag in 11th.
In race two, Lloyd was up to eighth at the start, before passing Ricky Collard for seventh four laps from the finish. However, the pace of Adam Morgan’s BMW would be too much to withstand, and Lloyd slipped back to eighth two laps from the finish, holding that position to the chequered flag to earn a season-best result.
The top seven were reversed for race three and Lloyd thus only just missed out on a better starting position, but in the end a sensor problem took him out of contention, and he finished 23rd, having also elected to run wet tyres in what turned out to be a dry race.
“We didn’t manage to piece the lap together in qualifying but when race one came around, I feel we did a really good job to make up four places and get into eleventh considering how hard it is to pass around Oulton Park,” said Lloyd.
“We worked to make changes for race two and had a great run up into the top seven before losing a place to Morgan which meant we just missed the reverse grid.
“Despite that, I felt confident for race three but on the way to the grid we had an issue with a boost sensor failure which the team fixed, but the sensor gave an incorrect reading on the green flag lap which meant the boost pipe came off.
“We had no option but to pit to fix it so having dropped half a lap, we rolled the dice and bolted on wets considering it was starting to spit with rain.
“The heavier rain never came so the gamble didn’t pay off, but we had nothing to lose by doing it and had the weather changed, we’d have been ending the weekend as heroes!
“In hindsight, it might be a good thing we didn’t get pole as I’d have been gutted to have the problem in that situation.
“The pace was really good all through race day and it was only down to that one issue in the final race that we haven’t come away with top ten finishes and three solid points results.
“All in all, despite race three, we can go away from the weekend with a lot of positives to take into the summer break.”