Toyota Gazoo Racing UK’s Tom Ingram was delighted with his front row start for the opening British Touring Car Championship race at Thruxton after what he described as a “genuinely quite scary” qualifying session.
Ingram, who was pipped to pole by Honda racer Dan Cammish, was one of a number of frontrunners to have high-speed moments and off-track excursions throughout the half-hour qualifying session at the high speed circuit.
Despite admitting he was “gripping onto the steering wheel” throughout, he hailed his Toyota Corolla as “magnificent” and noted the development the team had made to the car in terms of lap time compared to the last time they visited the high-speed Hampshire circuit.
“It was [flat out] and maybe a bit more! That was genuinely quite scary, I think my hands have gone white now from gripping onto the steering wheel!
“We made a load of changes between free practice one and free practice two, and the car felt magnificent so I am really, really happy with that,” he told ITV.
“That’s the quickest we’ve been around Thruxton by a country mile – by probably nearly a second – so yeah that’s 12 months of development under our belts and it goes to show that we’ve made some big improvements.
“When Dan [Cammish] did his time in FP1 and FP2 I thought, ‘that’s quick, that’s going to be tough to beat’ – but nearly, very very nearly! It’s always close around here, full credit to Dan, he has the biggest talent bag of the day!”
Ingram continued to note he was especially pleased with his front row start as he believes there is extra emphasis on qualifying this season due to the standard tyre giving less opportunities to make progress across the trio of races.
“That’s been key this year, because we don’t have the soft tyre or the hard tyre – obviously we wouldn’t have it here anyway – but because we haven’t had that, it’s kind of made qualifying a little bit more important,” he explained.
“If you had a bad qualifying you could always make it up over the rest of the day with a brave tyre choice or a bit of luck, whereas we just don’t have that this year because we’re on the same tyres all weekend.
“So it ends up being that if you’ve qualified at the front, you can have three good races, instead of last year whereas it could be one good, a bad and then a good one at the end so fingers crossed that’s going to set us up quite nicely for tomorrow.”
The opening British Touring Car Championship race of the day at Thruxton is scheduled to get underway at 11:40 BST tomorrow [20 September].