The path to forging a career in motorsport is a difficult one for aspiring drivers and, even for those with bags of talent, it can all count for nothing without the necessary budgets or the proper opportunities at the right time.
This is why scholarships, particularly on the national scene, can be such an important part of a young driver’s career, and one that can offer a vital boost as they look to climb the ranks.
Championships such as Ginetta Junior and Junior Saloon Cars have established, well-respected scholarships that attract lots of hopefuls, but a relatively new venture that’s hoping to become a mainstay was held for only the second time last month. The Dragon Sport Scholarship is the creation of Rhys Lloyd, the 2008 Welsh Sports and Saloon Car champion and a driver with years of experience in categories such as TCR and the Creventic 24 Hour series. The 38-year-old Welshman won the Britcar Trophy last season, after creating the scholarship to find a driver to race alongside.
The inaugural prize went to Jack Meakin, who made the most of the opportunity (see below), and the same prize has been put forward for this season. As well as a fully funded drive alongside Lloyd in a Dragon Sport-run Renault Clio in the Britcar Trophy, a test day in a TCR car plus an outing in the Spanish Endurance Series at Barcelona are also up for grabs.
“I think a lot of it is down to personal frustrations,” Lloyd responds when asked why he’s putting his own money into the scholarship. “I won the Welsh saloon championship and a few other things in 2008 and it was a very different situation to where I am now. I was hoping to make the step up into other series and I just felt like my racing came to a stop in 2009, pretty abruptly because of funding.
“I had a bit of a hiatus for seven or eight years, and I’ve still got a bit of a bad feeling about it and how there wasn’t that chance to make the step up and do anything else, so it kind of stems from that. It’s not the world’s biggest prize, but obviously it’s still a fair chunk and it’s giving something back.”
Autosport was given the opportunity to take part in the scholarship at Blyton Park to find out what went into the process of finding the 2024 winner. One thing immediately apparent at sign-on is that most hopefuls are there with their parents, while my ever-increasing number of grey hairs makes it clear that I’m towards the upper end of the age limit of 30 (and actually a bit above!).
“I would say if you averaged our age this year it would probably have been six or seven years younger than last year,” says Lloyd. “Last year I would have said we had, not older drivers, but probably late twenties, early thirties, whereas now, with what happened with Jack last year, it seems to be a bit more of a go-to scholarship, and endurance is more of a viable route I think.”
After a short briefing, the 32 participants are split into three groups to rotate around the different sessions, which include media/sim, fitness and on-track driving. The media session is headed by seasoned motorsport commentator Richard John Neil and Lloyd’s fiancee Carys Davies. “What do you know about the history of Dragon Sport?” asks Neil. As one more used to asking the questions, I’m momentarily caught out, eventually rambling about the team’s success in Britcar and how it’s providing drivers with a pivotal step up. The rest of the discussion centres on my racing plans for the year and the general importance of such scholarship schemes, but by the end of the questioning it’s clear that my interviewers are aware of my true purpose for taking part. Regardless, going through the same process as other applicants offers an insight into what they face and what the judges are looking for.
With no ABS fitted to the Clios, drivers are warned it will be easy to lock up, and that’s what happens approaching the fast left-hander of Bishops. Alongside me, driver coach Alex Nevill calls for me to lift off the brake, while my brain tells me the opposite
“Clearly anyone that wins the scholarship is representing Dragon Sport, so they need to be able to represent them well,” points out 2019 Renault UK Clio Cup runner-up Max Coates, scholarship organiser and one of the day’s driver coaches.
Moving across to the simulator, operated by SimDynamics, participants are given the chance to drive a Clio – the same car that’s being used on the day and for the upcoming season – around Brands Hatch. Two years of running on the iRacing software finally pays off. I’m setting respectable times among the candidates and certainly not out of my depth.
But it doesn’t last long as the fitness test proves to be the most challenging aspect. Headed by instructor Claire Johnson from The Naked Warrior, we’re put through our paces with squats, burpees, push-ups and sprint drills, which are followed by hand-eye coordination exercises with tennis balls. For this I’m paired with GB4 race winner Lucas Romanek, his presence here showing how appealing the opportunity offered by Lloyd and his Dragon Sport team is to a range of drivers. We’re also scored on our hand-grip strength and put through a reaction test, which salvages some of my pride battered by comparison to the younger and healthier participants.
Coates points out that the fitness test is not merely about looking for the strongest applicants – although that’s an important factor, especially for the discipline of endurance racing, with prolonged periods spent in the cockpit and fast driver changes imperative. It’s also an indication of someone’s perseverance and determination to push on through to complete the exercises. It’s good to know that by the end I’m not the only person in my session to be suffering from wobbly legs and aches that, at least in my case, lasted for days!
After the lunch break it’s time for the main element of the day, the on-track driving, which in the system of scoring accounts for 60% (the remaining 40% is split between fitness and media). The first session is as much about learning which way the track goes as anything else, having never been to Blyton before and, as I start to build up confidence in the car, it’s a job to manage the wheelspin on the wet track while I accelerate up the gears and find the limit of the braking.
With no ABS fitted to the Clios, drivers are warned that it will be easy to lock up, and that’s what happens approaching the fast left-hander of Bishops. Alongside me, driver coach Alex Nevill calls for me to lift off the brake, while my brain tells me the opposite before we harmlessly slide wide into the run-off area before rejoining.
After a few more laps we’re back in the assembly area, and Nevill runs through what I can improve on for my second run, notably looking ahead through a turn to the next approaching corner rather than what’s happening immediately in front of me.
Soon I’m back out with Coates on a slightly drier track and at a greatly increased pace. I find we’re getting on the throttle much earlier, although the front-wheel-drive car is prone to understeering through the slow chicane on the infield.
Perhaps inevitably, I overstep the mark and spin through the quick left at Bunga Bunga before coming to a stop in the run-off. I’m certainly not the only driver to end up off the track during the day’s running, with Coates suggesting “there’s enough power there to get it wrong, and also it means they are naturally a harder car to drive [than a junior car], and some people adapt to that very quickly and others don’t.”
What becomes clear during the day is that, although only one person can be given the top prize, all participants are treated as individuals and given appropriate feedback – an important element when each has paid £500 to be there. “Anybody who has entered a scholarship has put a decent chunk of money down to come and do it, so you’ve got to ensure that everybody coming away from it has had a positive experience and learned something,” adds Coates.
It’s left to the judges to pick six drivers who will advance and, while three are clear in the scoring, placings from fourth down to 12th are covered by only a handful of points.
After one more run, six become three – Matt Hyde, Jack James and Harri Reynolds – with each due to do one final shootout with Lloyd alongside to decide the winner. But the fading light and strict 5pm curfew means Reynolds is unable to get out to do his final run, prompting an ad hoc decision by the judges that shows how much they value a fair and informed decision.
“It was a horrible feeling because I knew I could do a good job, and then to know that I couldn’t show what I could do, it was frustrating,” says Reynolds. “Then we were given the opportunity to go again at Brands Hatch and that picked up my spirits because I thought that would suit me more than just a shootout.”
“The scholarships give such a good opportunity for anyone to really show what they can do” Harri Reynolds
All three were taken to Brands for an extra day of running, Lloyd admitting it provided a much more extensive assessment of each driver than the initial final shootout would have done. “The second day definitely had a different feel and it was really good because we had a lot more time to evaluate more thoroughly,” says Lloyd. “I would say everyone had three or four good runs. They had plenty of track time and it was really interesting.”
After race and qualifying runs, Reynolds was declared the winner, while Hyde and James are set to have further track time with Dragon Sport during the season. After finishing second on the Mini Challenge scholarship just the week before, and cutting short his GB4 campaign due to a lack of funds in 2023, Reynolds will have the perfect platform to showcase his talents this term thanks to the Dragon Sport Scholarship.
“The scholarships give such a good opportunity for anyone to really show what they can do,” says Reynolds. “To win it, obviously you’ve got to have some talent. It’s really important, especially for me where budget is where we struggle a lot. But now I have a chance to be able to show it.”
How winning the Dragon Sport Scholarship helped Meakin
“I was expecting the season to go well, but it went really well.” The winner of the inaugural Dragon Sport Scholarship, Jack Meakin, made the most of the opportunity last term as he and Rhys Lloyd claimed the overall Britcar Trophy.
Meakin had competed in several rounds of the championship in 2022, after only moving into car racing in 2021 with selected rounds of the Junior Saloon Car Championship. That lack of experience didn’t hinder him, either in his efforts to win the scholarship or in his season with Dragon Sport, in which he and Lloyd also came out on top of the competitive one-make class. “It surprised me that we were able to win overall because we were in the tightest class, so that’s really a testament to how the team as a whole performed over the season,” he says.
Being relatively new to endurance racing, the 19-year-old claims he learned plenty from Lloyd during their campaign, while in return Meakin was able to bring outright speed to their Renault Clio. “I would say he taught me a lot about the strategy side of endurance racing and just thinking about the bigger picture,” says Meakin. “I feel like I could bring some speed to the equation, and he can bring the experience and the mindset, which was nice. I learned loads racing with Rhys.”
Meakin’s focus this year is on gaining further experience in other championships, such as competing in the Citroen C1 24 Hours to gain knowledge of racing in the dark as well as outings abroad, possibly at the Nurburgring Nordschleife.
Those opportunities will be with Dragon Sport, the team keen to further develop the Motorsport UK Academy driver beyond 2023, with Meakin himself stating it’s “like one big family and everyone wants to help”.
“To have Rhys’s support now, that’s really the key,” adds Meakin. “With me winning the Dragon Sport Scholarship last year, I feel like I’ve got the long-term support of Rhys and that means a huge amount, to have someone in your corner and someone who is now a friend.”
