McLaren GT3 racer Daniel Lloyd enjoyed his best outing so far in the Blancpain Sprint Series during the second event of the season at a hot and sunny Brands Hatch Grand Prix Circuit over the weekend, 17th/18th May, with a highly competitive round two performance netting a top 12 finish.

While very happy to have made significant progress since the series opener at Nogaro in France last month, the 22-year-old category rookie’s mood was somewhat tempered having consistently lapped with pace good enough for a top 10 points finish at the very least.

“We’ve made a really big improvement this weekend”, said the Huddersfield racer, “The pace has been good, much more competitive than the first round, so things are looking positive. We still need to do more testing and find more pace in qualifying but we’re all still learning, the team is learning more about the car each weekend and it’s obviously my first season too.”

The highlight was undoubtedly Daniel’s performance in the Qualification Race on Sunday morning, where he took the second stint of the one-hour contest and helped to record a top 10 starting slot for the main championship encounter later in the day.

Lining-up in 16th position, team-mate Sten Pentus contested the first 30 minutes and climbed into the top 10 as the mandatory pit-stops began to be served. He then pitted himself to hand over the No.61 Bhai Tech Racing car to Daniel at the half-hour mark.

Rejoining in 15th place, the Briton closed down the sister McLaren of ex-Formula One racer Giorgio Pantano and in the space of a couple of laps he had pulled back half a second on the experienced Italian. Soon after, though, the Safety Car was deployed due to a spin for the BMW of Alex Zanardi.

When the action resumed on lap 29, with just over a quarter of an hour left on the clock, Daniel held 13th position but expertly moved up into 11th over the course of the next two laps. Then, on lap 35, he produced one of the moves of the race with a brilliant piece of opportunism – diving past both Pantano and Stefano Colombo at Graham Hill Bend as the duo delayed each other.

Claiming ninth position, the McLaren racer then became a target for the recovering Pantano who made a late dive up the inside at Druids on the next lap and edged Daniel wide on the exit. Holding 10th to the finish, Daniel was just 0.4 seconds shy of ninth at the flag on lap 40. Impressively, his best lap was almost 0.3 seconds quicker than Pantano’s and just 0.6 seconds shy of the best of the race.

“The first race was really good, I was really pleased with my performance”, added Daniel, “I had a good battle with Giorgio, which was great, and there was some good overtaking. Our pace was very strong and if we build on that for the next round we should be challenging for points for sure.”

Taking the opening stint for the main race, round two of the season, Daniel made a terrific launch from the rolling start to move up from 10th place into seventh as the tightly bunched pack exited Paddock Hill Bend. Momentarily nudged down to eighth, he was back into seventh just a few turns later but an unfortunate moment on lap five resulted in a slip outside the top 10.

Battling back, he posted very competitive lap times once more and with a strategy to remain on track until late in the pit-window Daniel handed the car over to Pentus at the end of lap 22 from second position – many of the front-runners having already stopped. Pentus ultimately brought the McLaren home in 12th position.

Zandvoort in The Netherlands will host round three of the 2014 Blancpain Sprint Series seven weeks from now on 5th/6th July.

Visit www.daniellloydracing.com for all the latest news and follow him on Twitter @Daniellloyd23