Tom Ingram ‘not losing sleep’ over ‘disappointing’ qualifying

British Touring Car Championship leader Tom Ingram accepted that qualifying in 15^th for the opening race at Knockhill was ‘the reality of the situation’ after his lack of hybrid held him back on Saturday.

The EXCELR8 Motorsport driver failed to get out of his Q1 group, having been just under half a second from group leader Colin Turkington and just 0.024 seconds from progressing.

Like title rival Ash Sutton, who only qualified in 12^th, Ingram struggled due to his lack of hybrid deployment, at just one second per lap in qualifying around the short Scottish circuit, and thus faces the prospect of starting race one from the eighth row of the grid.

“I think that [hybrid] is the thing that we can put it down to,” explained Ingram. “We knew that we were going to be around half a second deficit around here.

“From just the calculations that we did coming in, we knew it was always going to be two tenths to Jake [Hill], three tenths to Ash. Realistically it’s half a second if you’ve got it or haven’t got it, so we knew this place was always going to be difficult.

“It is what it is. Am I disappointed? Of course, I am. Am I going to lose any sleep over it? No, because it’s the reality of the situation. We’ll have a play tomorrow and see where we end up.

“You’ve got to be mindful of a couple of things around here and keeping out of trouble is always one of them.

“It’s a shame because the car actually felt fantastic – the car actually felt really nice it’s just that effect of the hybrid that you’re always lacking that little bit.

“You’ve got to remember that we use the hybrid effectively on two laps, so if you’re starting your qualifying lap you use it out of the [last] corner to the line. If you’re saying I had one second, it’s more like two, three is like six; you double it.

“You can deploy four, four and a half seconds depending on your deployment speed out of the final hairpin to even begin your lap, so it’s a big effect around here and we always knew that.

“I’ll keep the smile on my face and see what we’ve got [in the races]!”