Tom Ingram holds firm in opening Silverstone sprint

Tom Ingram claimed his fourth win of the British Touring Car Championship season at Silverstone, holding off a late race challenge from Jake Hill to close the gap at the top of the drivers’ standings to four points.

Following heavy rain throughout the morning at the Northamptonshire venue, the race began on a wet circuit, with drivers permitted a second warm-up lap to enable them to acclimatise to the conditions.

EXCELR8 Motorsport’s Ingram made a good start when the lights went out, as Hill jumped from fifth on the grid up to third by Becketts, thanks to a slower start from NAPA Racing UK’s Dan Cammish and passing Speedworks Motorsport’s Josh Cook at the second turn.

By the end of the opening lap Ingram was over a second clear of Team BMW’s Colin Turkington, who soon faded away, dropping over three seconds behind by lap six.

Turkington allowed Hill into second on the eighth lap, and the Laser Tools Racing BMW driver immediately started to close down Ingram’s near-four second gap.

Despite getting onto the rear bumper of the Hyundai by the closing laps of the race, Hill couldn’t find a way through and Ingram scored his 31^st career victory in the BTCC by just over half a second from Hill.

Cammish completed the podium after getting by Turkington on lap ten, and despite being ahead of team-mate Ash Sutton on the road, team orders didn’t come into play in the Alliance Racing garage.

Sutton made most of his progress on the opening lap, gaining six places up to eighth and picking off BMW’s Adam Morgan for seventh two laps later.

The reigning champion gained another two places when team-mate Daniel Rowbottom crashed into the rear of Cook’s Toyota at Becketts on lap four, an incident which took Rowbottom out of the race and cost Cook four places. Rowbottom was also reprimanded for the incident and handed two penalty points on his licence.

Like Cammish, Sutton then seemingly breezed by Turkington for fourth on the Wellington straight on lap 11, but his progress ended there and he took the chequered flag behind the other Ford.

Turkington took fifth, dropping almost five second back from Sutton by the finish, ahead of EXCELR8’s Tom Chilton in sixth.

Chilton and Cook were embroiled in a late-race scrap that saw the former claim sixth three laps from the finish with slight contact. However, the stewards deemed that the move was a ‘push-to-pass’ and the positions were reversed post-race, handing Cook sixth.

NAPA’s Sam Osborne was eighth, with the top ten completed by Toyota’s Andrew Watson and EXCELR8’s Dan Zelos.

A late race puncture cost Huff a points finish, whilst Morgan had been running in sixth before a self-inflicted spin exiting Copse on lap 16 dropped him down the order, the BMW racer eventually finishing in 11^th.

Power Maxed Racing’s Árón Taylor-Smith gained ‘only’ six places in the race to finish in 12^th, whilst the bad luck continued in the team as Mikey Doble failed to even make the start following a turbo issue which the team had been frantically working to try and fix ahead of the start of the race.

Race two is scheduled to get underway at 14:20 BST.

Revised race result

POS	NO	CL	NAT	DRIVER	ENTRANT	CAR	LAPS	TIME	BEST	GD
1	80			Tom INGRAM	BRISTOL STREET MOTORS	Hyundai i30 N Fastback	22	22:38.761	1:04.114	1
2	24			Jake HILL	Laser Tools Racing with MB Motorsport	BMW 330e M Sport	22	0.641	1:03.862	5
3	27			Dan CAMMISH	NAPA Racing UK	Ford Focus ST	22	0.771	1:03.787	4
4	1			Ashley SUTTON	NAPA Racing UK	Ford Focus ST	22	3.520	1:03.642	14
5	20			Colin TURKINGTON	Team BMW	BMW 330e M Sport	22	8.199	1:04.176	2
6	66			Josh COOK	LKQ Euro Car Parts with SYNETIQ	Toyota Corolla GR Sport	22	15.854	1:04.241	3
7	3			Tom CHILTON	BRISTOL STREET MOTORS	Hyundai i30 N Fastback	22	14.666	1:03.960	10
8	77			Sam OSBORNE	NAPA Racing UK	Ford Focus ST	22	23.412	1:04.817	11
9	11			Andrew WATSON	TOYOTA GAZOO Racing UK	Toyota Corolla GR Sport	22	24.691	1:04.745	8
10	45			Dan ZELOS	BRISTOL STREET MOTORS	Hyundai i30 N Fastback	22	24.857	1:04.404	20
11	33			Adam MORGAN	Team BMW	BMW 330e M Sport	22	26.802	1:04.239	6
12	40			Árón TAYLOR-SMITH	Evans Halshaw Power Maxed Racing	Vauxhall Astra	22	27.480	1:04.377	18
13	222			Chris SMILEY	Restart Racing	CUPRA Leon	22	28.668	1:04.539	12
14	16			Aiden MOFFAT	LKQ Euro Car Parts with SYNETIQ	Toyota Corolla GR Sport	22	32.903	1:04.832	16
15	29			Scott SUMPTON	Restart Racing	CUPRA Leon	22	33.182	1:04.709	15
16	22			Nick HALSTEAD	BRISTOL STREET MOTORS	Hyundai i30 N Fastback	22	34.337	1:04.797	17
17	12			Rob HUFF	TOYOTA GAZOO Racing UK	Toyota Corolla GR Sport	21	+ 1 LAP	1:04.675	9
18	18			Daryl DELEON	Duckhams Racing with Bartercard	CUPRA Leon	21	+ 1 LAP	1:04.624	13
R	32			Daniel ROWBOTTOM	NAPA Racing UK	Ford Focus ST	4	DNF	1:04.686	7
N/A	88			Mikey DOBLE	Evans Halshaw Power Maxed Racing	Vauxhall Astra	–	DNS	N/A	19