Restart Racing will begin Sunday’s opening race at Croft with both cars inside the top ten after Chris Smiley and Daniel Lloyd made strong progress during Saturday’s Race to Pole.
The eighth round of the 2026 Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship brought the team to North Yorkshire, where largely sunny and warm conditions were accompanied by strong winds throughout the day.
Saturday began with the weekend’s only Free Practice session. Dan finished 12th and was pleased with the balance of his Hyundai i30N Fastback, while Chris placed 18th after an interrupted session left him requiring further setup changes ahead of qualifying.
Both drivers showed encouraging speed during qualifying, but track-limits infringements proved costly. Dan produced a lap quick enough for seventh before it was deleted, dropping him to 11th on the Race to Pole grid. Chris also lost his fastest lap and qualified 13th, having initially been on course to finish fifth in his group.
All drivers started the 11-lap Race to Pole on the soft tyre, with Chris and Dan immediately making progress.
Both Restart Racing cars gained two positions across the opening two laps. They first took advantage of Gordon Shedden spinning on the opening tour, before passing Mikey Doble when he slowed with a suspected electrical issue on lap two. That promoted Dan to ninth and Chris to tenth.
By lap five, the pair had joined a tightly packed group of cars headed by Ricky Collard in eighth. Chris then moved ahead of Dan with a pass at Tower Bend on lap six, before Adam Morgan followed him through at the Hairpin. That left Chris ninth and Dan 11th.
Chris began to break away from the cars behind, while Dan remained close to Morgan and looked for an opportunity to reclaim tenth.
That opportunity arrived on lap nine when Morgan locked up at Hawthorn Bend. Dan capitalised and completed the move at the Chicane, returning to tenth place.
Charles Rainford applied pressure during the closing stages, but Dan defended his position to the chequered flag. Chris finished ninth, with Dan directly behind in tenth, securing a double top-ten starting position for Sunday’s opening race.
The weekend’s tyre allocation features the soft and hard compounds. Both drivers must use the hard tyre once across Sunday’s three races, with the soft tyre required for the remaining two.
Chris said:
“It has been a pretty positive day. We didn’t get a proper run in Free Practice with the red flags, so we only really completed some running on the hard tyre. That meant we went into qualifying a little bit blind when we fitted the softs.“We should have been fifth in our group, but we lost the lap for track limits. We ended up seventh in the group and started the Race to Pole from 13th.
“We moved forward a few places and finished ninth, which is a good position from which to start Sunday’s opening race. The car feels like it has good pace, so it gives us some good opportunities to fight for strong results tomorrow.”
Dan said:
“Saturday was much better than Donington. We initially qualified seventh, which was a good effort in only my second round back, but track limits meant we were demoted to 11th for the Race to Pole.“We had some decent pace in the race and finished tenth. The setup and the car itself felt pretty good, but we were struggling with straight-line speed and the engine temperature was getting high.
“We need to understand what caused that and resolve it overnight. If we can improve the straight-line speed and temperature issue, we should be in a good position to have a strong day tomorrow.”
