Tom Ingram was jubilant after the opening British Touring Car Championship weekend of the season at Donington Park, after his best-ever start to a season.
The 2022 champion was on the pace from the get-go, topping both of Saturday’s practice sessions before putting his Hyundai i30 N Fastback on pole position in the new qualifying format.
Despite a heavily delayed start to Sunday’s racing, Ingram prevailed in a wet safety-car affected opening race to hold off NAPA Racing UK’s Ash Sutton for the win.
The EXCELR8 Motorsport driver then doubled up in race two after battling back past Laser Tools Racing’s Jake Hill, who had used his BMW advantage at the start to shoot into an early lead.
Having by this stage already equalled his 2023 win tally with a 29th career victory, Ingram went into race three having to start from ninth on the partially reversed grid.
Making up one place at the start of the race, Ingram passed Josh Cook to sit in seventh on the second lap before the safety car came out.
As racing resumed, Ingram pressed on, fighting past Hill for sixth on lap 12, before he then became embroiled in a fierce battle for fourth.
Passing Toyota’s Rob Huff at Coppice, Ingram was hit at the chicane further around the lap by Hill and had to skit across the gravel as a result.
Ingram found himself in fourth and went on to post the fastest lap of the race, without hybrid, in his pursuit of a podium, but despite catching Sutton ahead, he had to settle for fourth.
His results mark a best-ever start to the season for the 30-year-old, who holds a nine-point advantage ahead of the second meeting at Brands Hatch.
“We’ve started the year exactly as we mean to go on,” said Ingram to TouringCars.Net. “We’ve come out of the blocks absolutely throwing punches.
“The car has felt alive, it’s felt up on its toes. It feels better than any car I’ve had ever, really. The 2022 car was strong, but not this strong. This feels on another level. From a winter’s work, we’ve done pretty well I must say.
“I’m pumped, confident, excited. I’m looking forward to the challenge of the next few races.”
Ingram says he felt sorry for Hill after a small mistake gave him the win in race two, and he harboured no ill feelings for Hill’s contact in race three.
“Jake and I have been racing against each other for seemingly hundreds of years it feels like. Jake knows what I do, I know what Jake does, Ash knows what we do. We all know how each other races, so you can have a good battle with each other and end up hanging each other close to the wire and get away with it.
“In race two, Jake just made a little mistake going into Turn 1 unfortunately for him. I actually felt sorry for him, because it’s one of those locked rear [wheel] things that you can’t do anything about.
“As soon as they chirp, you can’t get them back without dipping a clutch or anything silly. So I felt for him actually, as daft as that sounds, whilst also going ‘yes, I can get past him’.
“He didn’t help himself by then not deploying hybrid on the exit, which ironically would have saved him. Him not doing it is what allowed me to get past. It was a nice little battle, that.
“I think the contact [in race three] was more a misjudgement from his side on the hybrid performance. I don’t necessarily think it would have been an attempt at an overtake, it was more a case that with the speed he had by deploying hybrid for nearly a whole straight he probably misjudged it, so ended up throwing himself into a gap.
“Thankfully, I’d seen it coming, so rather than turning across his nose and fire myself half across the circuit to then be hit, I managed to just jump the chicane, so it was safest for all concerned.”
A set-up change ahead of the final race gave Ingram a further performance benefit which allowed him to gain five places from his starting position – a fact proven by him scoring the fastest lap of the race without using his one lap of hybrid boost.
“The car was just feeling very strong, and I took the fastest lap at three-quarters distance without hybrid.
“I made a little tweak going into that third race, the ‘tweak of the week’, which worked really well and helped to open the car up and allow me to be able to race a little bit harder, which is good.
“I feel knackered. It feels like the longest day ever. I feel like I’ve done five BTCC races!”