Tom Ingram: ‘We’ve done phenomenally well’

Tom Ingram was full of confidence leaving the Silverstone round of the British Touring Car Championship, with two race victories moving him into the joint lead of the series ahead of next month’s finale.

Wet weather played a significant role in the penultimate weekend of the year, and Ingram believes it helped him to ultimate claim pole position on Saturday.

The EXCELR8 Motorsport driver had originally been second fastest, the changeable conditions helping to lessen the impact of his lack of hybrid, which then became pole when Árón Taylor-Smith failed the post-session checks.

Ingram then scored a lights-to-flag victory in the opening race on Sunday, despite a late-race charge from chief rival Jake Hill seeing the duo run nose-to-tail in the closing stages.

The 31-year-old slipped to fourth in the second race, with setup tweaks limiting his progress, but when only the top six were reversed for the final race, it gave Ingram a strong third on the grid.

Passing both front-row starters around the outside at Copse corner on the opening lap, Ingram mastered the torrentially wet conditions to assume an early lead.

The race was then suspended after eight laps due to the conditions, and when it resumed half an hour later, Ingram held off a charge from Ash Sutton to claim his second win of the day, and his fifth of 2022.

With Hill being demoted a place after the race, it leaves Ingram tied with his rival on 365 points heading to the showdown in Kent in just under two weeks’ time.

“I said coming into this weekend that I wanted a very ‘vanilla’ day of three beige results just to get us through this weekend,” explained Ingram to TouringCars.Net.

“Marvin [Humphries, Team Manager] and I were speaking coming into the weekend that we’ve just got to get through it and tread water – I didn’t realise we were going to have to literally tread water! We didn’t really want to be doing anything too dramatic.

“Incidentally, we’ve probably had the best weekend we could have hoped for with two wins and a fourth.

“We’ll turn up to Brands this year faster around Brands Hatch GP than we’ve ever been, because the car is feeling utterly ridiculous.

“So, I’m confident – I think we’re in good shape. I’m feeling good, the car’s feeling good and I see no reason we can’t get it done.”

Ingram believes that the biggest boost the weather provided to him came on Saturday, when the wet conditions in the latter part of qualifying helped to minimise the disadvantage of a lack of hybrid.

“In qualifying [the weather] helped, but in the dry I think we were strong enough. It obviously helped lucking into a pole, but we were still second so it’s not like it’s all been gifted to us.

“We’ve had to be very tactful this weekend and use all the time we had available to us and be very aware of the conditions and really think about it, rather than fly by the seat of our pants.

“I think we’ve done phenomenally well.”

Ingram refused to be drawn on whether he could rely on much in the way of assistance from his team-mates at Brands Hatch, whilst also pointing out that he feels Sutton is still firmly in contention, despite being 33 points back.

“I’m not going to give away too many secrets about what the [team orders] plan is for Brands, but we’ll be alright.

“The points gap is nothing between Jake and I. Ash is thirty something points back, but Jake and I are very close.

“You can’t rule Ash out – you only need Jake and I to have a coming together and Ash is going to pick up the pieces. You’d be an absolute fool to rule Ash and NAPA out.

“The likes of Ash and Tony [Carrozza, his race engineer] are a formidable pairing, so you’d be an absolute numpty to rule those guys out.

“It’s going to be a pretty tasty finale, I think.”