Ollie Taylor: “I gave it everything” as he takes second in qualifying

Pyro Motorsport’s Ollie Taylor emerged as Dan Lloyd’s closest threat to pole position in qualifying at Brands Hatch, briefly coming to within four-hundredths of a second of the Volkswagen driver, until Lloyd improved his time again in the final moments.

Taylor, who’d made the switch to the Honda Civic FK8 TCR after a back-to-back test with the older model from this weekend, managed to qualify on the outside of the first row for the first race of the day on Sunday.

“It was close until the end there, and then Dan pulled that out the bag,” said Taylor to TouringCarTimes.

“That’s the fastest lap I’ve ever done around here – it felt good. At one point, we were one and a half tenths off pole, then I gave it everything I had and put us right up there, but then my engineer came over the radio and said Dan’s gone even faster.

“I’m pleased with my performance considering the amount of miles we’ve done in the car.”

With the Honda well-known for its starts, which may give Taylor his best opportunity to get the jump on Lloyd in the race, the Suffolk-based driver admitted he hasn’t done many starts in his new car yet.

“I’ve done one start in Free Practice 2 earlier which went well,” he said. “The procedure is exactly the same as the old Honda so there’s nothing new to learn. I just need to nail the procedure, which isn’t that easy. We’re front row, I’m confident for the start and looking forward to tomorrow and two good races.”