1,000 Greatest Drivers: Richard Lloyd
Lloyd's of London
My mom caught COVID. She was the only person on her wing of her floor at the nursing home who had it, so they’re thinking I might have brought it to her. I’m not sure about that because I wasn’t out much. I did have a virus last week and was starting to come down with it a week ago Tuesday, so I stayed home and quarantined myself Wednesday and Thursday, but then I came back on Friday when I felt like I was over it. The weekend before that, I didn’t even go to mass because I didn’t want to walk in 2°F weather, so the only places I even went besides the nursing home were to bar trivia and maybe to get groceries once or twice. I woke up with a headache this morning, but I think that was more from not eating enough. I haven’t come close to having a fever this week, but I suppose I could’ve had COVID last week. The reason that didn’t occur to me was because I was way sicker during my November virus when I had a 101.6°F fever than I was last week, and I don’t really feel sick right now at all. I honestly think I probably picked it up at the nursing home if I did. Nonetheless, I knew to quarantine myself, and I decided not to visit Mom, and I skipped out on either going to an Ash Wednesday service or going to bar trivia tonight until I’ve tested myself. I did buy a COVID testing kit today, and it and a few other groceries arrived a couple of minutes ago. Hopefully, I’ll know how to administer it right.
I’ve just started watching Malcolm in the Middle, two episodes at a time, for the past couple of weeks. I had wanted to for a long time because I was a big fan of the first six seasons of Roseanne, and I knew it was similar, not to mention the idea of a trailer trash child prodigy feels very resonant, as I was not so far removed from that myself. I didn’t watch it as a kid, and it’s been pretty hard to find as an adult. I was traditionally a fan of physical media, and whenever I was subscribed to Netflix (many, many years ago), I always preferred the DVD mail delivery, which now no longer exists. Because of the music rights, only the first season of Malcolm was ever released on DVD, so I didn’t bother for quite some time. But after I decided to join Disney+ to watch the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction last year, I’ve decided to watch other things on there too. It felt like a good time for it, what with all of Frankie Muniz’s recent racing crossovers and the impending reunion series (although reunion series are almost always bad). The verdict: I like it, and I think it’s very good, but I don’t think I’ll ever quite consider it a favorite show, and really, I find it more sad than funny. Like what Roger Ebert said about Napoleon Dynamite: “to sit through this film in depressed silence would not be cool, however urgently it might be appropriate”. Ebert’s wrong that it is bad, and I wouldn’t say Malcolm is bad either, but his quote still seems to apply here. There’s only so much I can like a series where every character (save the teacher and some of the Krelboynes I guess) is a reprehensible human being, having grown up in the family values era when most of the family sitcoms were saccharinely sweet, but I still admire it and will keep watching. I don’t really think Malcolm reminds me of me at all, despite both of us having a propensity for rapid arithmetic. And it really baffles me that Bryan Cranston somehow became the biggest actor in the world after this, when his character is easily the least interesting in the main cast, and even less interesting than several of the side characters. As a racing fan, it was funny hearing how much Malcolm hated racing when the family skipped school to go to a weekday race (yeah, right), even though his character was named after a fictional racing driver, particularly when considering that’s what got Frankie Muniz into racing in the first place. I guess it makes sense to talk about this today since Muniz drove the pace car at the 2001 Daytona 500 and was one of the last people to speak to Dale Earnhardt before he died on this day 25 years ago…
Man, that Ralf Aron wreck in the Bathurst 12 Hour was absolutely brutal. The officials in that race really should’ve called a full-course caution much sooner, and it’s really rough that bad officiating and a malfunctioning radio caused him to not know there was a stopped car on the track, which resulted in him crashing while leading and suffering a broken back. For as much as people criticize NASCAR officiating, it can be so much worse. At least the bodies of the cars have gotten a lot safer since Earnhardt’s day…
I was going to do John Morton yesterday since it was his birthday, but I just didn’t bother once I went through all his seasons and retrospectively decided that I was wrong to declare him a lock, even though he is about to be inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America this year. I didn’t want to do the other major driver who was born on February 17 yet (Matt Campbell) because he is still very relevant and might not have peaked yet, so I was going to fill in with one of the drivers from January I hadn’t done yet, but just didn’t get around to it. For Lloyd, I struggled to come up with a best race because while his cumulative numbers were enough for lock status, I just didn’t find myself knocked out so much by any of his individual races. So, I defaulted to his first British Saloon Car Championship win as an owner-driver, even though it was only a class win where he finished second and not an overall win. I’ve also decided not to list the ratings for any drivers with fewer than ten touring car teammate comparisons (like Lloyd), fewer than ten stock car teammate comparisons, or fewer than five open wheel teammate comparisons. That’s too small a sample size to really draw any conclusions. Lloyd technically has a negative touring car rating, but I know that is not the least bit representative of his career. Part of the problem is that his sweep of the then-fifty-something Stirling Moss didn’t count for much because Moss’s rating was only based on his mediocre late-period touring car results, rather than reflecting that he was one of the best drivers ever in his earlier career.
RICHARD LLOYD………………………UK
Born: February 18, 1945
Died: March 30, 2008
Best year: 1978
Best drive: 1977 BSCC Race #3 at Oulton Park
One of the top domestic British drivers and car owners of his era, Lloyd had an unusual background as he started in the record industry, working for Decca Records from 1964 to 1970; Decca’s biggest act at the time was Cliff Richard. Although he started racing in 1967, his breakthrough came in 1971 when he formed Motor Race Relations, a PR agency representing Formula 5000 stars Peter Gethin and Mike Hailwood and British Saloon Car Championship star Chris Craft. Shortly thereafter, Lloyd himself debuted in the BSCC in the 1973 finale at Brands Hatch.
In his first two full-time seasons, he won eight races and finished second to Stuart Graham in the D class both years. After a lackluster 1976, he formed GTi Engineering in 1977, which later became Richard Lloyd Racing. In his first three owner-driver seasons, he won a mind-boggling 24 of 33 races and the Class B championship every year. He never won the overall championship because each year he lost to drivers who dominated other classes more. Even in 1978, when Lloyd won every race he started except for one race where he was disqualified, he lost the title to Richard Longman because Longman won 11 races to Lloyd’s 10, even though Lloyd had 6 overall wins to Longman’s 0.
Despite 34 BSCC wins, 5 European Touring Car Championship class wins, and 4 World Sportscar Championship class wins, Lloyd became even better known as an owner. He signed many great drivers, including World Champions Damon Hill and Keke Rosberg; he even lured Stirling Moss out of retirement for a full 1980 BSCC campaign. After leaving the BSCC, Lloyd switched to the WSC in 1981 for Porsche, where his team won three overall races with other drivers. After shutting down his WSC team in 1990, he resurfaced in 1996 as the team principal for Audi Sport UK in the renamed British Touring Car Championship, winning the title with Frank Biela in the team’s debut season. After the team pivoted to sports car racing, switched to Bentley, and changed its name to Apex Motorsport, they scored a 1-2 overall finish at Le Mans in 2003. Sadly, he, fellow BTCC star David Leslie, and three others were killed instantly in 2008 when their jet crashed into a house after both the plane’s engines shut off.
I think I’m actually more impressed with Lloyd as a driver, since he had more major wins as a driver than as an owner, albeit in a fairly shallow era of the BSCC. Admittedly, the fact that he rarely had teammates except a 50-year-old Moss makes his touring car career hard to evaluate, but I rate touring car drivers higher than most others do, and he was certainly one of his era’s best. I’m particularly impressed that his best seasons were his owner-driver years. Nonetheless, his combined roles as driver, owner, and agent made him a bigger icon than his driving career alone. A big hole was left in British racing after his death.
Touring car model: N/A
Teammate head-to-heads: 4-4 (1-0 vs. Willi Bergmeister, 0-1 vs. Jonathan Buncombe, 0-1 vs. Stuart Graham, 0-1 vs. Tony Lanfranchi, 3-0 vs. Stirling Moss, 0-1 vs. Vince Woodman)
Year-by-year: 1974: C, 1975: C, 1977: E-, 1978: E-, 1979: E-, 1980: C+, 1981: C, 1982: C, 1985: C-