Huddersfield’s Daniel Lloyd has his sights firmly set on a return to the British GT podium this coming weekend (May 30/31) as the Oman Racing Team driver prepares for his second consecutive 3 hour race at Silverstone for round four of the Avon Tyres championship.
A challenging second round of the Blancpain Endurance Series on the British track last weekend (May 23/24) promised much for Lloyd and his Aston Martin Racing team-mates, with the opening sessions looking set to deliver a solid qualifying result before changeable weather conditions saw the #44 Aston drop down to P18.
With such a highly competitive grid of over 60 of the world’s top GT cars and racers, progress was difficult through the packed field, but Lloyd once again showed his pace and race craft to work his way up into P12 during his opening hour long stint. Unfortunately, an intermittent fault developed on the Aston during the final two hours of the race and the resulting inconsistent lap times meant that the Vantage ended the race outside of the points in 19th place.
“After a promising start in the practice sessions, qualifying looked to be going our way for once and we were in a strong P2 position for much of the season before we caught out by the change in the weather;” said Lloyd.
“The standard on the Blancpain grid is so high that qualifying outside of the top ten really does massively limit your chances of progressing well in the race, but I was happy with my stint and managed to hand over the car to Ahmad in P12. Unfortunately the car then developed an issue that affected the ABS and Ahmad struggled to keep a consistent lap time;” he added.
“Jonny did well but again had a problem with the steering which meant we just dropped back again. It’s really frustrating as we went into the weekend thinking that we had a really good car but we just don’t seem to be getting the rub of luck in the Blancpain at the moment.”
Attention now turns to the British GT championship as Daniel and his team-mate Ahmad Al Harthy head back to the Northamptonshire circuit for the highlight of the season, the Silverstone 500. Following an impressive second place finish at Rockingham just three weeks ago, the Silver Cup duo are determined to pick up where they left off and to close the gap on the championship lead.
With 150% points on offer for the three hour contest; Lloyd is hoping for a repeat performance of Al Harthy and the Motorbase-run Oman Racing Team’s commanding win here last season. “I’m looking forward to getting back out on the track again this weekend to put the Blancpain result behind us;” added Lloyd.
“Ahmad and the team had an excellent result here last season, and on paper Silverstone suits the Aston well so hopefully we’re able to put in another strong performance this weekend and keep the pressure on the championship battle.”