- Two-time BTCC champion adds to career victory count in Hampshire
- Bucks-born ace battles back from ill-fortune to dominate final bout
- Team VERTU star confident progress made ‘bodes well’ for rest of season
Tom Ingram sped to a commanding second victory of the 2026 British Touring Car Championship campaign at Thruxton last weekend (25-26 July), overcoming a litany of dramas to ascend the highest step of the podium around the country’s fastest circuit.
The BTCC’s eagerly-anticipated trip to Hampshire marked the resumption of racing following the series’ annual summer break. During free practice on Saturday morning, Ingram blew away any lingering cobwebs as he reacclimatised to the daunting, edge-of-the-seat 2.36-mile track – where unflinching commitment, bravery and maintaining momentum are invariably the keys to success.
Despite having access to only three seconds per lap of TOCA Turbo Boost (TTB) in qualifying – the second-lowest allocation in the high-calibre, 22-strong field by dint of his elevated championship position, while many of his adversaries benefitted from the maximum 20-second deployment – the Team VERTU star comfortably topped the timesheets in his group. Indeed, he posted not just one but two efforts good enough to book a berth on the front row of the starting grid for the points-paying ‘Race to Pole’.
Following an excellent launch, Ingram briefly threatened Josh Cook for the lead before slotting in behind, thereafter keeping the local specialist – the BTCC’s all-time winningest driver at Thruxton – in his sights throughout as he took the chequered flag barely a second in arrears.
Facing a similar boost deficit in Sunday’s curtain-raising contest, the defending champion went doorhandle-to-doorhandle with fellow multiple title-winner Ash Sutton around the opening tour, prior to finding himself sideswiped by an out-of-shape Dan Cammish going through Goodwood. The unfortunate incident squeezed his Hyundai i30N onto the grass at high speed, with Ingram doing well to bring the squirrelly moment back under control.
The loss of time dropped him down the order to ninth, but headlights ablaze and with the bit between his teeth, he produced a characteristically determined recovery to fight back to fifth at the flag. After pulling off a particularly crowd-pleasing pass on Adam Morgan around the outside of the chicane, he ultimately fell barely two-thirds-of-a-second shy of unseating Senna Proctor from fourth.
Ingram immediately overhauled former team-mate Proctor at the beginning of race two, before setting his sights on Dan Rowbottom and prising the door ajar on lap five to snatch third place exiting Segrave. Next on his radar were Sutton and Cook, and after cutting the gap to the leading duo, the talented Bucks-born ace drafted past the latter on the approach to the chicane at three-quarters distance, only for light contact between the pair to force him across the run-off area.
Having already been warned about exceeding track limits – a regular issue at Thruxton – that resulted in a ten-second penalty, so while Ingram crossed the finish line as runner-up, he was demoted to fifth in the official classification. On the flipside, that placed him on the front row of the partially-reversed grid for the day’s finale. It was an opportunity he had no intention of squandering.
In front of the live ITV4 television cameras and a huge on-site crowd, the 32-year-old boldly held his nerve to relieve James Dorlin of the top spot before the cars had emerged from the Complex for the first time, and following an extended safety car neutralisation to clear up a collision further down the field, he swiftly scampered away again.
With his start under review – due to having slightly overshot his grid box, obliging him to reverse into the correct position – Ingram was conscious he needed to get the hammer down in order to counteract any potential penalty, while simultaneously remaining mindful of not pushing too hard and risking further track limits transgressions.
Deftly treading the tightrope between exuberance and caution, he went on to prevail by some 5.6 seconds at the conclusion of a peerless performance – a buffer that would prove vital when the Coventry-based racer was subsequently docked five seconds for the start-line infringement.
Fastest lap by the margin of more than a second bore ample witness to his prodigious pace, and having notched up his 42nd career triumph in the UK’s premier motor racing series, Ingram will travel north of the border to Knockhill in Scotland in just under a fortnight’s time (8-9 August) eager to continue his winning ways – around a circuit whose tight, twisty and undulating nature could scarcely be more of a contrast…
Tom Ingram, Driver, Team VERTU, said:
“Frustrating is the word, I think! Having haemorrhaged so many championship points at the beginning of the season, I went to Thruxton looking for a quiet weekend with no drama, but we seemed to be a magnet for drama in every race!
“Given the championship situation, we had no option but to adopt a full-attack mentality. The car didn’t feel great in free practice, but we worked really hard and made some fairly fundamental changes. It consequently felt quite a lot better in qualifying, even if we were clearly lacking some boost.
“I was very pleased with the ‘Race to Pole’. I got away well at the lights and put up a bit of a challenge against Josh [Cook], but I knew he had a decent chunk more boost than I did and would have the legs once everything settled down. Thruxton can be a difficult place to overtake unless you have a significant advantage over the car ahead because you get caught up in the dirty air, so I was happy to shadow him.
“There were a few circumstances that went against us at the start of Sunday’s first race. Ash [Sutton] gave me a couple of nudges, which enabled him to get to my right-hand side going through Noble. He then checked-up early for Goodwood, meaning I had to go to his left and that allowed Cammish up my inside, but Dan clipped the kerb, which fired him into me and sent me onto the grass. We were lucky not to have a big accident.
“After that, I spent the majority of the race in traffic, which caused all of the temperatures in the car to skyrocket. In that kind of scenario, it’s so difficult to make progress, but the Hyundai felt fantastic and it was very positive that we had the speed to come back through even with such little TTB.
“In race two, I had a good first few laps, then gradually closed on Josh. I decided to begin deploying my boost and managed to get him going up the hill, but we had a coming-together at the chicane. I had no option but to jump it, which obviously contravened track limits and resulted in a penalty.
“From there, I went into race three aiming to at least salvage something from the weekend. My engineer, Spence, came over the radio early on to tell me my start was under investigation and that I needed to try to build a five-second gap, which is never easy to achieve against Ash, especially as I knew he would be pushing hard as well in an effort to stay within that window. With that hanging over me, I had to extract absolutely everything I could and we just pulled it off.
“Overall, the weekend didn’t yield what we wanted due to a series of unfortunate events. It felt like a bit of an uphill battle despite the pace we clearly had, but I’m pleased with the job we did, because we weren’t great in free practice yet by digging deep and putting in the hard yards, we ended up with probably the best car I’ve ever had around Thruxton.
“That’s really encouraging, and I think what we’ve learnt will similarly translate elsewhere, which bodes well for the remainder of the season. We’ll chalk this one up as a learning experience and come back stronger at Knockhill.”