Tom Ingram believed that he had learnt plenty from his first year in the British Touring Car Championship, as he ended the season with three top-ten finishes at Brands Hatch.
Ingram started the weekend well, advancing from his 11th place grid slot to finish in eighth, while a sixth place on the road in race two became fifth after Jason Plato was excluded from the results for contact with Colin Turkington.
The young racer did drop three positions to finish ninth in the season-ending race – which was held in treacherous conditions – but that nevertheless sealed his best points haul from a weekend in 2014, ending the year 14th in the drivers’ championship with 121 points.
Speaking to TouringCars.Net, Ingram explained that he was ‘guessing’ at times in the soaking third race, which presented the most difficult on-track conditions he had faced during his first season in the series.
“They were tricky,” said Ingram. “I couldn’t see a thing that was going on, it was very hard, I found myself going down the back straight guessing that there would be something stopped or waiting for the people in front’s break lights to come on.
“They weren’t the best conditions, but we all had the same thing to drive in, it was just that bit harder with four or five cars ahead of me kicking up spray as well.”
A fifth-place after Plato’s race two exclusion gave Ingram his best result of the season, and the 21-year-old expressed his satisfaction at securing the result with a pleasurable drive.
“I’m really happy with that result. You want to try to get the results on the track and not afterwards but it was great to get our best finish at the end of the year, it was really positive because it was hard work and it was a good race as well, I really enjoyed it.”
Sunday’s final race also marked the end of Ingram’s rookie season. While the Speedworks driver has lamented his luck at times during the campaign, he insisted that he had learnt plenty from his first year in the sport.
“There’s certainly been a helluva lot of learning that I’ve done,” admitted Ingram. “Not only learning how to drive a front-wheel drive car, but also dealing with everything over the race weekends – there’s so much to get your head around and learn what to do, where to be, who to see, so it’s been really good from that perspective and it only puts us in a better position for next season.
“It’s momentum we’ll look to take forwards and hopefully it will lead to even more exciting things next year.”