Restart Racing will be looking to climb on the final race day of the 2026 Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship, having positioned themselves to fight through the pack during a tight Saturday at Brands Hatch GP.
2026’s closing Saturday saw Chris Smiley and Dan Lloyd pilot their Hyundai i30 N Fastbacks through one 50-minute Free Practice session, before taking on timed qualifying and the subsequent Race to Pole.
While May saw the paddock take on the Indy layout of Brands Hatch, where James Dorlin scored the Jack Sears Trophy for Restart Racing, the season-closing action sees the field tasked with the historic 2.43-mile GP variant.
Saturday morning Free Practice saw plenty of laps as the Restart Racing squad looked to bed in and lay the foundation for a strong closing weekend. Notching 46 laps between them, Dan finished 11th with a late representative run of 1:29.783 and Chris 13th after posting a 1:30.048.
Being in odd-numbered finishing positions, both cars would be placed in Group 1 for the timed segment of qualifying.
Heading out amongst a competitive group, Chris and Dan found themselves in steady standing as the session progressed. Setting laps worthy of fifth and eighth, a late red flag would offer the opportunity to peel in and assess before a late push for progress.
However, as cars behind found pace, late efforts were not enough to improve on the previously set times. At the flag, Chris scored eighth in the tightly-packed group and Dan 10th with laps of 1:29.973 and 1:30.401, 16th and 20th amongst the combined grid.
Both drivers would improve on their starting positions immediately as the Race to Pole progressed. Chris jumped past Gordon Shedden on the first lap to push into the points, while Dan would climb up to 17th by moving ahead of Lewis Gilbert, Sam Osborne, and Tom Chilton.
Chilton would get back past Dan on the next tour, as the mid-pack settled into a tight fight that would weave back-and-forth through the rest of the Qualifying Race on the GP loop’s testing turns. Chris would be able to gain one more, getting by Adam Morgan, but also found concrete moves difficult around the tight circuit.
At the flag, a 14th for Chris rewarded him and the squad with one point, while Dan’s 17th gives him plenty of room to progress through Sunday’s three races.
Chris said:
“So that’s qualifying day finished here at Brands Hatch. It’s been one of those days where we’ve kind of been stuck in and around 14th or 15th place.“The car is okay, I just feel like we’re lacking a bit of overall pace. In the Race to Pole, we started 16th and moved forward a few places to 14th. There weren’t really many cars making much progress in that race. It was all kind of line astern, with everyone being on the same boost and the same tyre.
“We start race one tomorrow from 14th, on the fringes of the top ten. If we can hang on in and around there and try to get ourselves into the reverse grid for Race Three, hopefully we can get a result out of this weekend.
“I’m looking forward to tomorrow. I think we can improve the car, so hopefully we can get ourselves a result.”
Dan said:
“So, rounding up today at Brands GP. We started off quite well with 11th, but there were some changes to make to the car to improve it. We went for those changes and, unfortunately, we went completely the wrong way.“The rear was so loose in qualifying that I actually went seven-tenths slower than I did in practice, so we ended up right at the back in 20th.
“Unfortunately, we’re not allowed to change anything on the car going into the race, so we knew it was going to be a struggle. We held on and made up a few places, but really didn’t have any pace whatsoever.
“We’re just going to have to revert back to where we were this morning, make a few changes alongside that, regroup and try our best tomorrow.”
