Tom Ingram turned a four-point deficit into a 21-point advantage in the hunt for British Touring Car Championship honours at Croft last weekend (27-28 July), as a brace of hard-fought podium finishes enabled him to pull away from his pursuers in his quest to clinch a second career crown.
Behind the wheel of his EXCELR8 Motorsport-prepared Hyundai i30N, Ingram immediately served notice of his intent around the challenging North Yorkshire circuit by setting the pace in the first free practice session, and he remained comfortably ahead of his principal title rivals in FP2.
Despite benefitting from just three seconds of hybrid deployment – the second-lowest allocation in the high-calibre, 20-strong field, by dint of his championship position – the Team Bristol Street Motors star maintained that stellar form to top the timesheets in both of the opening phases of qualifying in the UK’s premier motor racing series. In the ‘Quick Six’ shootout, he then produced acharacteristic all-out effort to secure third on the grid – a scant 0.008s adrift of a berth on the front row.
The next day, Ingram wasted no time at all in moving forward as he snatched second from Dan Cammish going through the chicane on lap one of the curtain-raising contest. He thereafter kept Colin Turkington honest while simultaneously inching clear of the chasing pack, and although the leader exploited his additional hybrid boost to establish a two-second gap in the closing stages, the runner-up spoils were nonetheless sufficient to vault the 2022 champion back to the summit of the standings.
The top six finishers in race one had to trade in the faster Goodyear soft tyre for the slower hard compound for race two, but that did not deter another feisty Ingram first lap. In front of the live ITV4 television cameras and a capacity trackside crowd soaking up the warm summer sunshine, he boldly relieved Turkington of the lead around the outside of Tower Bend courtesy of an ultra-committed pass that took full advantage of the rear wheel-drive BMW’s cold tyre vulnerability.
Notwithstanding that spirited start, it was always going to be a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ those drivers on the softer rubber would work their way through, and the 30-year-old ceded to the inevitable on lap five. He went on to take the chequered flag fourth – best-placed of the hard tyre contingent.
From fifth on the partially-reversed grid for the day’s finale, Ingram kept his foot firmly planted as arch-rival Ash Sutton edged him onto the grass on the blast down to Turn One. He then attacked Árón Taylor-Smith for second on lap two, toughing it out to make the move stick, but as they both drifted wide, the loss of momentum allowed the following Cammish to leapfrog the pair of them.
The Bucks-born ace survived subsequent contact with Turkington to make third place his own, never letting Cammish or race-leading team-mate Tom Chilton out of his sights and coming within a whisker of grabbing an extra point for fastest lap as the front-running trio sped well clear of the battle behind.
His second visit to the rostrum in three races duly confirmed Ingram as the weekend’s top scorer, and he will travel to Knockhill in Scotland on 10-11 August eager to turn up the wick once again.
Tom Ingram, Driver, Team Bristol Street Motors, said:
“It was a hell of a weekend – fast and frenetic throughout. I knew we’d be really strong from a chassis perspective at Croft, but at the same time, I was conscious of the hybrid situation and with the allocation we had, I genuinely didn’t expect to be fighting for the front two rows of the grid. I think we over-performed in that respect, and while Q3 wasn’t quite perfect, I was very pleased to line up third.
“I didn’t need a second invitation to fill the gap Dan [Cammish] left open for me on the first lap in race one, and after that, I tried to match Colin [Turkington] but at a certain point, I had to admit defeat, knowing he had more hybrid available than I did. I was also mindful of needing to be a bit careful on the soft tyres in the hot conditions so I pushed for as long as I could until Colin began to deploy his hybrid, and let’s be honest, he was never going to make a mistake – it’s not for nothing that he’s nicknamed the ‘King of Croft’!
“We knew it would be tricky on the hard tyre in race two; we won that particular battle, which was great, but as soon as the guys on the softs came up behind, it made sense to let them past so they could just get on with it. In that scenario, you don’t want to trip over people, especially when we had a gap back to everybody else on hards. Discretion was definitely the better part of valour; there was little point in fighting too hard or taking any risks when the soft tyre was clearly much quicker.
“Race three was then fantastic for the whole team, and I was so, so pleased for Tom [Chilton – team-mate] – he had the pace all weekend and he drove fantastically. The Hyundai felt phenomenal again – really alive and an absolute joy to drive – and knowing we’re in such a great window with it obviously gives me a lot of confidence.
“The BTCC is so incredibly competitive that we’ve got to make sure we perform every single time, but that’s a kind of pressure I enjoy, so we’ll keep our heads down, keep focussing on ourselves, keep doing the job we need to do and keep ticking the race weekends off. There’s still a long way to go and of course there’s always more we can extract, but we’re in a happy place and the car seems to be working well everywhere. Hybrid will likely be very significant at Knockhill, but I think we’ll be strong there nevertheless – so the target has to be more of the same…”
