Flying Welshman Hywel Lloyd goes into this weekend’s Formula Three International Championship races playing catch-up.
The 26-year-old Sino Vision driver from Corwen badly needs to make up ground on the rest of the field at the UK’s newest racing circuit at Snetterton, near Norwich.
It is a familiar challenge that confronts Lloyd who was headhunted in the winter to spearhead the Chinese-backed team’s campaign – how to translate his speed in races into qualifying.
His 165-mph F3 Dallara Mercedes was off-balance at Oulton Park in the second event of the season and that left Welsh-speaker Lloyd struggling to pilot it round the corners of the twisting Cheshire circuit.
At racetime Lloyd had pace but Oulton Park offers few passing opportunities and he was unable to build on the positive start he had made in the season’s opener at Monza in Italy where he was in the points in two of the three races.
At Monza even qualifying down the field wasn’t too much of a handicap for Lloyd who twice carved his way through the field to finish seventh and only just missed out on a top ten spot in the final race from a grid position of 18th.
“We need to be better in qualifying at Snetterton,” he said: “But it does give you a few more chances to pass – really we’ve got to be looking for every opportunity.
“It’s a remodelled circuit that’s new for this year and we’ve only had a couple of days of testing there last month but it looks good, there’s a large infield area which flows really well and there are a couple of high speed corners.
“As always qualifying will be important and we’ve been working hard on the car since Oulton Park, tweaking a few things and we did have the run at Snetterton a few weeks ago so we were able to set up then.”
The team are confident that if they can crack the qualifying conundrum then Lloyd has the talent to make a real impression on the powerful Carlin and Fortec racing stables which have dominated so far.
He does have a major advantage compared to previous years when he was competing as a privateer with his own family-run CF Racing team and that is the presence of a second car and driver with Hong Kong’s Adderly Fong at the wheel.
Lloyd said: “Everyone is very committed and it is definitely helping to have Adderly to compare notes with and it means we can get twice as much work done as I was able to on my own.
“We get on well and we’re able to try out different things so the team get twice as much feedback and that means we should have twice as much chance of getting things right.”
Lloyd isn’t looking any further ahead than Friday when he heads his car out of the pit lane at Snetterton for a practice session but already his team have been practising for the latest curve ball to be thrown by the F3 organisers – compulsory pit stops.
Last year they were brought in for the first time at a number of meetings when cars would have to come in and pit before heading off again but this year there will be a major difference – tyre changes.
The pit stops don’t come into force until the trip to the fearsome Nurburgring in July but the Sino Vision pit crew have already been practising and next week they will be doing it with Lloyd and Fong and it promises to be interesting: “It’s a real test for the crew,” said Lloyd.
“I just have to make sure I stop in the right place and don’t run over the jack man but I know from last year that after you’ve been doing 160mph every second you’re stopped feels like an age – everything is in slow motion.”
For the moment though the team are concentrating on getting Lloyd’s car ready for Saturday morning’s qualifying sessions with one race on Saturday afternoon and two on Sunday.
For more on Hywel Lloyd go to www.f3racing.co.uk
