No joy for Hywel at Oulton Park

Hywel rounds Esso Corner in his chase for places & points

Hywel Lloyd & his Sino Vision team member Adderley Fong, faced a major task over the Easter weekend at Oulton Park in Cheshire, after showing well in pre-season testing and scoring points first time out at Monza last weekend.

Lloyd & Fong found the balance of their Dallara Mercedes cars not to their exact liking in pre-race testing but whilst overnight changes made the cars better to drive & the times were better, they could not set the ultimate one lap time that they needed in Fridays qualifying session and had to settle for a lowly 16^th & 17^th on the grid, Fong just piping Lloyd. Changes were made prior to the race 1 & Lloyd commented "It will be difficult to get a result but finger crossed." However he made a fast start and was up to 14^th after lap 1, closing in on a train of 6 cars disputing the Holy Grail of 8^th place, which held the promise of some more championship points and the chance of a shot at pole for race 2. However after a flurry of action on the first lap, the race turned into the sort of stalemate which has become so typical of Formula 3 races at Oulton Park, with no overtaking virtually throughout the whole field. Meanwhile as the leader Lucas Foresti was stretching away, Lloyd had risen to 12^th but he had cars pressuring him. "It was quite difficult. I had a couple of cars behind me as well pushing, so I felt hemmed in whilst trying to push on. We should be ok for Monday but it’s quite puzzling really. Testing went really well last weekend, we were quite quick, and in pre-season testing we have been up there. We just didn’t find the sweet spot with the car this weekend and you have don’t to be far out with these cars to be a long way off on lap times, but I am quite confident we can claw the speed back."

However despite the best efforts of Lloyd & the team, the points scoring places remained just out of reach in Mondays races. However he remains in 10^th place on points and in the Castrol Edge rankings

The next races in the Cooper Tires British F3 Championship will be held on the newly revised Snetterton Circuit near Norwich, on the 14 & 15^th of May when hopefully the new layout will provide more opportunities for overtaking.

Results & Timing http://www.tsl-timing.com/