LLOYD IS PROVING TO BE SOMEONE YOU CAN BANK ON

Dan Lloyd was rightly chipper after finishing second in race one at Donington in his Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra, just two weeks after scoring two podiums in the previous round at Silverstone. “I’ve had more podiums in the last two weeks than I had in 10 years before in the BTCC!” he quipped.

The form of the Yorkshireman has been one of the pleasant stories of recent weeks. He’s never before had the budget to have a full season with one team in the BTCC, and had been plying his trade in the past couple of years in the highly competitive TCR Europe series, where he was a title contender. But his domestic series was where he wanted to be.

This year, Lloyd has had to make a transition back to NGTC machinery and said “my style is completely different to the start of the season”. For example, in a TCR car “you have to smack the brakes”, which doesn’t work in NGTC. But it’s coming good, and he led a qualifying 2-3 ahead of Jason Plato for the PMR squad, which ran a partial campaign in 2020 with a selection of drivers.

“It’s been a tough season and we seem to be getting somewhere,” explained Lloyd. “In all honesty, I don’t think last year helped the team. How could it not make a difference? But although it’s been a tough one, this is 100% where I will be next year. I’ve been working in the office five or six days a week, and everything’s looking good.”

While Lloyd got good results, Plato suffered a recurrence of a mystery problem that appears to afflict his car far worse than Lloyd’s in traffic. He could only convert third to sixth in race one, then “got smashed off by Chris Smiley” early in the second, and could not recover.