Tom Ingram experiences day of ‘resilience’ at Knockhill

EXCELR8 Motorsport’s Tom Ingram had a fortuitous day to leave Knockhill continuing to lead the British Touring Car Championship standings, after a ‘day of resilience’ at the Scottish circuit.

Struggling with a lack of hybrid on Saturday, thanks to leading the standings going into the event, Ingram could ultimately only muster up 15^th in qualifying, having failed to get out of his Q1 group due to being just under half a second off the pace although only 0.024 seconds from progressing.

From the eighth row of the grid in the opening encounter, the 2022 champion was struggling to make progress when he made contact with Aiden Moffat’s Toyota on lap seven, resulting in damage to Ingram’s car for which he would pit and ultimately record a non-score.

From plum last for the second race, but now with full hybrid, Ingram had briefly worked his way into the points by lap three, but was knocked down the order to 16^th again by Chris Smiley on lap six.

Undeterred, Ingram was able to get up to 12^th by the halfway stage, and he completed a pass on Árón Taylor-Smith to score a top ten result on the final lap of the race.

The reverse grid draw then put Ingram third on the grid for the final race as the top 12 were reversed. Holding station on the opening lap of the final race, Ingram took second from Taylor-Smith on the second lap and despite applying race-long pressure to leader Rob Huff thereafter, he ultimately settled for second.

With a series of mixed results for his rivals, Ingram has seen his series lead reduced from 21 points to just three ahead of the eighth event of the year at Donington Park in just under two weeks’ time.

“That was a tricky weekend, you might say,” said Ingram. “We had calculated that our lack of hybrid would realistically equate to a deficit of around half-a-second per lap at Knockhill, so qualifying was always going to be a struggle with only one second of it to deploy.

“We were next-to-nothing away from making it into Q2, but in all honesty, I don’t think that would have made any major difference to our grid position.

“The aim from there was to fight our way through and haul ourselves into the mix for race three while simultaneously trying to stay out of trouble, which clearly turned out to be easier said than done!

“I got caught up in drama in race one, got ‘Smileyed’ in race two and then had to try to recover again from there, which I think we did as best we could. We needed some luck to turn things around and thankfully, the reversed grid draw gave us that chance.

“That one was good fun! ‘Huffy’ is a world-class driver who I grew up watching and admiring while he was competing in the WTCC, and it’s an absolute pleasure to race so closely against somebody like that.

“I tried to put him under pressure and there were some cracks appearing that allowed me to stick my nose in and get the overlap on a few occasions, but at the same time, having haemorrhaged points earlier in the day, I was very mindful of needing to finish.

“If a genuine opportunity had presented itself, I would obviously have gone for it, but it was all about managing the risk.

“Rob knew he could take more risks than I could and he played a blinder, and ultimately, second place was far better than both of us ending up in the gravel trap trying to be heroes. It was a good result to conclude a challenging weekend.

“Overall, Sunday was a day of resilience, keeping smiling and thinking of the bigger picture. A major positive is that the car felt fantastic throughout – it was just the fallout from our lack of hybrid that left us on the back foot and susceptible to the perils of racing in the pack.

“There were several times when it felt like everything was falling apart, but we knew we had had to keep our heads up and that paid off in the end.

“This championship is all about playing the long game – and there’s a long way still to go.”