Dan Lloyd was left feeling frustrated with his return to the British Touring Car Championship at Oulton Park, where the BTC Norlin driver failed to break into the points with 45 kg of late-arrival ballast on board.
Lloyd was drafted in as a last-minute replacement for James Nash, who stepped aside from racing ahead of the event.
The TCR UK points leader was reunited with Honda machinery, having raced a Civic in 2016 with Eurotech Racing, but had to carry 45 kg for joining the championship late.
That meant Lloyd could only manage 22nd in Saturday’s qualifying session, over three tenths slower than team-mate Chris Smiley.
Lloyd then went on to finish 25th in race one and 17th in race two, before a big start line accident in race three wiped both Lloyd and Smiley out just metres after the start.
“Oulton Park wasn’t the weekend that we hoped for,” said Lloyd. “We struggled with the weight a lot more than we hoped and that really hindered our pace. Oulton is a circuit that’s really hard on your brakes so adding 45 kg was always going to make life difficult.
“Unfortunately, we picked up a gear cut issue in free practice and qualifying so that dropped us back a bit, but the team did a great job to get it sorted for Sunday and the Civic was handling really well.
“Race one was hard going with the weight and we just lost the brakes at the end. We had good pace in race two though and were one of the quickest Swindon-powered cars on the grid.
“It’s just so tough to overtake there, but we managed to stay out of trouble and all things considered, finishing 17th was a great result.”
Lloyd admitted that having his race three cut short so early on was frustrating, with the Huddersfield-based racer now looking ahead to his home race at Croft in just under two weeks’ time.
“We were really optimistic for the final race as we’d been getting quicker all day and closer to the points, so it was such a shame to get caught up in someone else’s incident.
“I don’t know what caused the crash, someone just came across and into me on the start finish straight and wiped myself and my team-mate Chris [Smiley] out of the race.
“I’d like to say a big thanks to Bert [Taylor, Team Principal] for offering me the chance to join the team and also massive thanks to the guys for making me feel so welcome. I really enjoyed working with them all this weekend.
“I feel like we made some positive changes to the car to fit me better and I’m really looking forward to heading to Croft without the weight on-board and seeing what we can do.”