Dan Lloyd delighted in his first-ever double podium finish in the British Touring Car Championship at Silverstone, with the Power Maxed Racing driver enjoying his strongest weekend of the season.
Lloyd put in his best qualifying effort of the year by posting the fifth fastest lap in Q2 on Saturday, having been just two tenths of a second off the pace.
The Vauxhall driver then made further gains in race one as he jumped up to third at the start of the race, passing Josh Cook at Becketts and then Aiden Moffat at Brooklands, before settling into the final podium place for the rest of the race.
With 57 kg of success ballast on board for race two, Lloyd struggled to keep pace with the leaders and immediately dropped three places at the start.
As the race progressed, Lloyd, unused to running with much ballast in the BTCC, gradually slipped back and finished the race in 12th.
However, with Josh Cook being excluded from the results, Lloyd was promoted to 11th which handed him the reverse-grid pole position for the final race, having initially just missed out.
The 29-year-old led for the first nine laps, but ultimately lost out to the charging MB Motorsport Ford of Jake Hill, who Lloyd admitted he had not battled too hard in order to preserve a second-placed finish.
“It’s fantastic for us as a team,” said Lloyd to TouringCars.Net. “We’ve had a really tough year. To qualify fifth was fantastic to start with, and then to make a couple of positions up and race well and finish with a podium, that was great.
“Obviously, we had some luck with the reverse grid, but like I say all day long, we have our fair share of bad luck, so we’ll certainly take a bit of good luck every now and again.
“I made the most of it and opened up with a really solid lap. Jake certainly had the pace on me, and it was a choice whether to have a battle or work with him and I think I made the right decision on that one.”
Lloyd admitted that although he was able to keep up with Hill, it was in part due to utilising the effects of slipstreaming his rival.
“The tow makes a difference around here, so it’s a little bit chicken and egg. Our car couldn’t stop and get rotated at Luffield as well as his, and that’s where we were really struggling and that’s where he passed me.
“I’m not frustrated at all. I did the best job I could with the car I had, and the outcome was great.”
Despite enjoying his best weekend in the BTCC, Lloyd feels that one of the reasons he was able to get so high up the order early on in the weekend was due to the lack of ballast compared to the rivals he was mixing it with.
“We’re not rapid because of the weight situation, you’ve got to take into account. If we had the weight that the likes of Tom Ingram and Josh Cook had, we’d be a sitting duck. We’re not mega quick, we’ve just improved it and little bits we’re doing at the moment.
“One big thing we need to sort out is the cooling of the engine, because when we’re in dirty air like we were in race two, we’re just a sitting duck – we die a death in dirty air. That’s what we really need to work on.”
The Yorkshireman is hoping to carry his momentum forward to Donington Park in two weeks’ time.
“I think Donington is quite similar to Silverstone in quite a few ways. This is probably the most consistent we’ve kept a car over a race weekend instead of trying loads of different things.
“Hopefully we can take that to Donington and keep tweaking it – we’re not going to reinvent the wheel.
“We’re not going to be ultimately the fastest car, but if we can keep staying in the mix and do what we’ve done today then that would be great.”