Excelr8 Motorsport’s Daniel Lloyd described a difficult weekend in the British Touring Car Championship at Knockhill as being ‘a perfect storm that we couldn’t overcome’ as he left without any points.
Lloyd had headed up to Scotland in an optimistic mood, after he had claimed two victories last time out at his home circuit at Croft – his best-ever BTCC weekend – just before the summer break.
But in the end, Knockhill proved to be potentially one of his worst weekends, as Lloyd scored no points all weekend.
Lloyd made a mistake on setup in first practice which left him down in 24th, which didn’t improve much for second practice, where he was 19th.
A stuck wheel hub in qualifying caused further grief, leaving Lloyd to qualify in 22nd for Sunday’s opening race.
On race day differential issues in races one and two, hybrid problems and contact in Sunday’s races then meant Lloyd could only finish in 19th, 22nd and 18th respectively, giving him a zero score from Knockhill.
“It’s been a disaster of a weekend – there is no other way to put it,” said Lloyd, who remains eighth overall in the drivers’ standings.
“We headed for Knockhill on a real high after the results at Croft, but one mistake right at the start on the set-up of the car – as well as issues with the hybrid that would persist all weekend – led to things snowballing.
“Saturday was really difficult as we just didn’t have the pace and then in race one we had a differential issue that meant the car was spinning its wheels in third and fourth gear – so even though I made a great start to get up to 17th, it was almost undriveable.
“Because the schedule was so tight, it couldn’t be fixed for race two so that was meant we had to effectively write that one off, although getting hit off track didn’t help and meant further damage that I really don’t need when we’re still trying to bring in additional sponsors to cover what happened at Oulton Park.
“In race three, the differential was fixed but we still didn’t have any pace in the car, which we need to look into back at base.
“However, when you combine the stuck wheel nut, the hybrid issue and the differential problem to the set-up error we were trying to resolve, it created a perfect storm that we just couldn’t overcome.
“It’s a massive shame because we know how the strong the car is, even though I doubt we’d have been able to challenge the BMWs this weekend for outright honours.
“I have to accept that this was not my weekend and it’s now more important than ever that we bounce back at Snetterton, avoid the mistakes that were made this weekend, and return to the kind of form we know are capable of.
“If there is a positive to take away from the weekend, it’s that the guests I had present from Abracs and Continental Wine and Foods enjoyed their time at the circuit – even with the tough time we endured on track
“Hopefully in future, they will have more reason to cheer when they are trackside supporting me.”