Lloyd takes flawless maiden BTCC victory

BTC Norlin Racing's Dan Lloyd has secured his first ever British Touring Car Championship race victory after producing a flawless drive during the reverse grid race at Croft.

Lloyd's maiden win also delivered BTC Norlin Racing their first ever triumph in the series after the team switched to Honda machinery for the first time this season.

Having started the reverse grid finale from pole position, Lloyd didn't put a foot wrong after successfully retaining his lead at the start of the race.

Lloyd enjoyed the vast majority of the race with a two-second lead ahead of Motorbase Performance's Tom Chilton, who gave attempted to give chase in second position.

However, as the race entered it's final quarter, Lloyd appeared to find another gear and eventually extended his lead to a race winning of margin of over 5.5s ahead of Chilton's Ford.

Chilton came under some degree of pressure from the hard tyre-running Vauxhall Astra of Senna Proctor towards the end of the race, but the Ford driver held off Proctor by 0.4s as the pair crossed the line.

Behind the top-three, Honda's Matt Neal came out on top in the battle for fourth following a ferocious multi-car fight for the position.

At the end of lap 8, Neal had dropped behind the hard charging Subaru of Ashley Sutton at the final hairpin. However, the Honda driver regained the position just one corner later after pair clashed at turn one.

The altercation pitched Sutton towards the tyre wall on the exit of Clervaux corner, but the reigning champion somehow managed to avoid making race ending contact with the wall by grasing the tyres on the exit.

Sutton subsequently dropped to seventh in that incident but later moved back up to sixth at the expense of BMW's Andrew Jordan.

Colin Turkington's attempts to move past Neal's Honda were also in vain but the Team BMW driver still strengthened his championship lead over Tom Ingram with fifth.

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