On his first outing with the team in the Blancpain Endurance Series Daniel Lloyd helped the Beechdean AMR team to finish in the top ten of the competitive Pro-Am Cup class at Silverstone.
Despite wet weather limiting Lloyd’s preparations for his first race in the Aston Martin Vantage GT3 he was able to qualifying tenth fastest in his segment of qualifying – the first session of running on a dry track – to put the #107 car 11th overall on the grid, fifth in the Pro-AM class, the largest of the three categories that make up the BES field.
Furthermore the Huddesfield was trusted with driving the opening stint of the race, showing very strong pace as he moved into the top five overall, taking second among the Pro-Am teams by overtaking Aston Martin Racing works driver Richard Abra.
“I’m over the moon with my stint, I did everything right and the Aston was fantastic,” said Lloyd. “The team has been a pleasure to work with, they’re all mega guys at Beechdean and it’s been great working with the Aston Martin Racing boys. It’s a different ball game to the Sprint Series but I’ve loved every minute.”
Unfortunately, though both Andrew Howard and Alex MacDowall turned in trouble free stints to keep the team amongst the best of Pro-AM car the Beechdean team were one of several teams to be disadvantaged by a late race safety car during MacDowall’s anchor leg.
“When the safety car came out later on it definitely cost us,” explained Lloyd. “Andrew and Alex both did solid stints, we were just a bit unfortunate with how things played out. Without any practice I learnt so much about the Aston in just those few laps in qualifying, then the race was fantastic. I think I probably got my hopes up a bit too much that we might have had a chance of the podium.”
“There were over 40 guests with us this weekend and they all had a fantastic time in the Beechdean hospitality, huge thanks to all of my sponsors and a big thank you, of course, to Andrew and everyone at Aston Martin Racing – it’s been mega.”
Lloyd will rejoin the Beechdean team for the Total 24 Hours of Spa in late July. Before then, however, he will return to Bhia Tech Racing, the McLaren MP4-12C and the Blancpain Sprint Series with the next race at Zandvoort in Holland on July 5-6.
