Flying Welshman Hywel Lloyd was blasting his Formula Three speed machine around Donington Park this week – from the comfort of a simulator more than 100 miles away.
Lloyd was strapped into the machine in London but the 26-year-old from Corwen will be at the Leicestershire circuit for real on Thursday as he prepares for the weekend’s F3 International Series meeting.
Lloyd said: “The simulator is a really good way to get yourself back into the feel of a circuit and when you only drive there once a year it’s an invaluable aid to a driver.
“It means I can get used to all the braking points again and positioning the car but I can’t wait until Thursday when we’re there for real.
“It’s a bit of a refresher really and I’m sure it will stand me in good stead.
“I’ve had some success at Donington in the past but not in F3 but I’m going there with high hopes. We’ve got a much better car now and there were signs at Rockingham that we could be really competitive this weekend.”
The trip to Donington is the penultimate event in the F3 International Series calendar with just one more meeting, at British motorsport’s home at Silverstone next month, and Lloyd is looking to make an impact after a run of bad luck.
He was looking good at both Spa in Belgium and Rockingham when he was taken out in each in the feature race of the weekend – by Brazilian Yann Cunha at Spa in an incident which left the usually calm Welshman fuming and by Aussie Scott Pye.
Lloyd chalked that one up to a racing incident and didn’t blame Pye but it still left him stuck in the gravel and out of the race after a blistering start had put him within range of a podium finish after he blasted from tenth to fifth in the first four corners of the race.
Donington once looked likely to succeed Silverstone as the home of the British Grand Prix until the convoluted world of F1 politics and finances took another turn and UK motorsport’s blue riband event stayed put.
But this is the first time F3 cars have raced on the 2.5 mile Grand Prix circuit and Lloyd said: “Donington is a good track, very smooth, probably the smoothest we race on and that can mean it is difficult to get temperature into your tyres.
“You need them to be hot enough to do their job but it’s a top class circuit and has good variety.
“We do need to use plenty of downforce there but there are a couple of places where there are slow corners that set you up for overtaking moves so there should be some good racing.
“We’re very hopeful that the changes we made to the car before the final race at Rockingham will mean we can continue to show the sort of race pace we had there.
“We did make some mistakes there but by the final race we seemed to have it about right and we’ll look to hit the ground running on Thursday.”
Lloyd and the other F3 competitors will be testing on Thursday and then have a day off on Friday before qualifying takes place on Saturday morning with the first race of the weekend in the afternoon.
That will be followed by two more races on Sunday with the main event, the 40-minute race in the afternoon.
Television coverage will be on Channel 4 on Saturday, October 1, at 7am and on satellite on Motors TV UK the same day at 5.30pm.
For more on Hywel Lloyd go to www.f3racing.co.uk
