With points on offer as well as grid position for the final TCR UK races, qualifying at Donington Park would have an integral part to play in deciding who would be the 2018 champion. Of course, there’s still a long way to go with both races yet to come, however the tables seem to have turned back in favour of Dan Lloyd.
A superb performance from WestCoast Racing meant that the Swedish team secured the top three grid slots for Race One, with Lloyd on pole position ahead of his team-mates Andreas & Jessica Backman.
Lloyd’s title rival Ollie Taylor had shown impressive form in the earlier practice sessions, however the Pyro Motorsport driver could do no better than fourth place in qualifying, meaning that the Backman siblings would create a buffer between the pair of contenders.
Stewart Lines was next up, half a second slower than Taylor. For the Maximum Motorsport team owner/driver, fifth place was a good result. Lining up alongside him would be Darelle Wilson. After months of performance and reliability issues, it would’ve been a huge relief for Wilson to finally get his Vauxhall Astra TCR back into the mid-grid mix.
Finlay Crocker will start the opening race from seventh on the grid, with Carl Swift for company who qualified in eighth. Swift’s attention will be firmly placed on Race Two however, as his second-best lap time would secure pole position for him thanks to the reversed-grid rules.
Youngsters Lewis Kent and Josh Price would round out the top ten, however both have proven that they’ve got good racing pedigree amongst this field. It certainly wouldn’t be a surprise to see them try to carve their way higher up the standings during Sunday’s two races.
Sadly, two cars that won’t be taking part this weekend are the Vukovic Motorsport Renault entries. After a recent test at Hockenheim, some technical issues were identified with the cars, and the team have unfortunately not been able to conduct the repairs and adjustments in time for this weekend’s TCR UK finale.
