Reigning Stellantis Motorsport Rally Cup champion Ioan Lloyd made a superb start to his FIA Junior European Rally Championship with a tremendous fifth place on Rally Sierra Morena in Spain (April 4-6).
Lloyd, 22-years old from Llandysul in West Wales, and his co-driver Sion Williams, are contesting the high-profile international series in a Peugeot 208 Rally4 from Tagai Racing Technology (TRT) based in Hungary. The Junior ERC is one of the most competitive and prestigious junior rally championships in the world.
Lloyd’s biggest rallying programme to date opened on the 42nd running of Rally Sierra Morena, based in Cordoba. This all-asphalt event is a hugely popular rally on the Spanish calendar and alongside a bumper entry for the ERC, there were 22 contenders in the Junior ERC including many of the best young crews from all over Europe.
Though some of his rivals had competed on a rally in Spain the weekend before Sierra Morena, Lloyd went into his first asphalt event for seven months: since Rali Ceredigion last September.
Lloyd said: “We always want to be quick straight out the blocks. We’d done some testing, but there’s nothing like doing a rally to get into the groove so we settled ourselves in and then just built the pace from there.” After Saturday’s stages, Lloyd was 12th in the Junior ERC ranks and went into Sunday’s stages confident of moving up the order.
His pace was underlined on the opening stage of Sunday morning when he set the second fastest Junior ERC time over the challenging 12-mile test, just 1.8s down on Junior ERC leader and local ace Sergi Perez. That form continued with more top six stage times as Ioan and Sion stormed up to finish fifth in the Junior ERC pack.
Ioan was elated with the result and the whole experience. “We loved every minute of it. The pace is incredibly hot and I was absolutely delighted to progress through the weekend. The whole event was absolutely phenomenal. We were consistently setting good times and we were absolutely chuffed to show that we can be on the front pace.
“Saturday afternoon was good but on Sunday I really got into it, and the feeling was very good. I’m absolutely over the moon with the team. The team was absolutely phenomenal. There’s such a great bunch of guys and they’re so welcoming and they’re so good at what they do.
“It’s a great start to our Junior ERC programme and there are lots of positives to take from the event. To get a top five finish was fantastic. I’m so pleased to have started with a strong result for our sponsors and all the people who have helped us put this programme together.”
Now, Lloyd and Williams will switch their attention to the second round, Rally Hungary in early May. “We head onto gravel now, so that presents a different kind of challenge but I’m really looking forward to it. Hungary is the home round for the team, so hopefully we can have a strong start on gravel as well.”
