Daniel Lloyd enjoyed an outstanding debut in the Volkswagen Scirocco R-Cup during the opening round of the season at Hockenheim in Germany on Saturday, 30th April - the teenager qualifying on pole position and going on to finish a richly deserved second overall in his first race in the series.
Delivering sensational pace from the off, the 19-year-old Briton, who competes in the Junior Cup class as a championship novice, scorched to the outright pole with a best lap of 1m57.603 seconds - a massive 0.6 seconds ahead of his closest rival.
Doubly impressive considering this weekend marked the Huddersfield racer's maiden experience of the 4.57-kilometre German Grand Prix venue, Daniel's unmatchable performance obviously placed him in a fantastic position to try and capitalise with a podium finish on his VW Scirocco R-Cup debut. Lining up on the front row of the grid for round one alongside Pro Class runner Mateusz Lisowski, Daniel unfortunately got a little too much wheelspin off the line from his 225bhp turbo and that made the difference between a potential overall victory and the runner-up spot.
Slotting in behind the Polish driver, the championship rookie was never far away from the leader and took the chequered flag on lap 11 only 1.5 seconds adrift. In addition, Daniel came within just five 100ths of a second of snatching the fastest race lap which was taken, in the end, by former Grand Prix driver, World Touring Car Championship front-runner and DTM runner Nicola Larini.
"I'm over the moon to have finished second on my first weekend in the championship", said the West Yorkshireman, "Obviously I am a little bit disappointed not to have won after starting on pole position but it's still a fantastic result and a brilliant way to start the season. "I got a bit too much wheelspin at the start and couldn't get off the line as well as I wanted to, that was the difference in the end. I was fighting the car a bit from about six lap as I struck a kerb pretty hard and that made it a bit of a handful. All in all though, it was a fantastic first race."
Having never visited Hockenheim prior to this weekend's action, Daniel only had the half-hour practice session on Friday, 29th April, to familiarise himself with the track but he still managed to post the ninth fastest time overall - second quickest Junior Cup runner. To go on and take a clear pole position in his first VW Scirocco R-Cup qualifying session, and a second place finish in round one with the Junior Cup class win, certainly marks Daniel out as a driver to watch for the remainder of the 2011 season in the pan-European championship.
The next event of the 2011 Volkswagen Scirocco R-Cup, the first double-header race meeting of the year, will take place at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria, five weeks from now on 4th/5th June.
