- Team Bristol Street Motors star forced to dig deep for Scottish silverware
- Championship leader beaten-up but unbowed north of the border
- 30-year-old engages in epic duel for victory in front of enthusiastic audience
Somewhat against the odds, Tom Ingram left Knockhill yesterday (11 August) still at the summit of the 2024 British Touring Car Championship standings, after unleashing a crowd-pleasing charge in the weekend’s final race to clinch his tenth podium finish of the campaign.
The outcome was against the odds for two reasons. Firstly, Ingram lined up just 15th on the grid for the curtain-raising contest – his worst qualifying position in the UK’s premier motor racing series in almost three years – due to having, as championship leader, the lowest hybrid deployment in the field around a circuit where that extra power is critical. And secondly, his race day efforts were hounded by bad luck.
Uncharacteristically missing out on advancing to Q2 – by a scant 24 thousandths-of-a-second – the Team Bristol Street Motors star knew he would be fighting an uphill battle, and so it would transpire. At the mercy of the traditional mid-pack rough-and-tumble, he made a move on Aiden Moffat at the beginning of lap seven in the opening encounter, but contact as the Scot caught a slide while the pair ran side-by-side towards Leslie’s spelt an early bath.
To compound the situation, that put Ingram plum last on the high-calibre, 20-strong grid for race two. In typically feisty fashion, the talented Bucks-born ace swiftly gained ground and had worked his way into the points by lap three, before finding himself brusquely elbowed through the gravel by Chris Smiley, dropping him down the order again.
Digging deep, he recovered to 12th by mid-distance and thereafter closed down a five-second deficit to the eighth-placed squabble ahead, with committed late passes on Rob Huff and Árón Taylor-Smith lifting Ingram into the top ten on the very last lap.
The result not only represented damage limitation, but also secured the 2022 champion third on the partially-reversed grid for the weekend’s finale. Immediately showing he meant business, he pulled off a peach of a move to steal second from Taylor-Smith courtesy of a late dive into Clark’s corner, prior to posting the quickest lap of the day – two tenths-of-a-second better than anybody else was able to muster – as he set his sights on Huff in the lead.
Rapidly reducing the gap, Ingram latched onto the former FIA World Touring Car Champion’s tail, and in front of the live ITV4 television cameras as well as a large and appreciative trackside audience soaking up the summer sunshine, the duo engaged in a no-holds-barred battle for the ages.
Behind the wheel of his Hyundai i30N, Ingram tried repeatedly to prise the door open as he darted this way and that, drawing alongside on multiple occasions as both drivers pushed right to the ragged edge in an epic duel. Huff, however, is an experienced and canny operator, and his staunch defence obliged his EXCELR8 Motorsport rival to ultimately settle for second, snaring extra points for setting fastest lap and leading a lap – having crossed the start/finish line ahead at one stage by the margin of a mere 0.002s!
That, allied to the runner-up spoils, enabled Ingram to narrowly reclaim the advantage in the chase for the coveted crown with nine races left to run. Next up is a trip to popular Leicestershire circuit Donington Park on 24-25 August – where earlier this season, the 30-year-old sped to a dominant double victory.
Tom Ingram, Driver, Team Bristol Street Motors, said:
“That was a tricky weekend, you might say! We had calculated that our lack of hybrid would realistically equate to a deficit of around half-a-second per lap at Knockhill, so qualifying was always going to be a struggle with only one second of it to deploy. We were next-to-nothing away from making it into Q2, but in all honesty, I don’t think that would have made any major difference to our grid position.
“The aim from there was to fight our way through and haul ourselves into the mix for race three while simultaneously trying to stay out of trouble, which clearly turned out to be easier said than done! I got caught up in drama in race one, got ‘Smileyed’ in race two and then had to try to recover again from there, which I think we did as best we could. We needed some luck to turn things around and thankfully, the reversed grid draw gave us that chance.
“That one was good fun! ‘Huffy’ is a world-class driver who I grew up watching and admiring while he was competing in the WTCC, and it’s an absolute pleasure to race so closely against somebody like that. I tried to put him under pressure and there were some cracks appearing that allowed me to stick my nose in and get the overlap on a few occasions, but at the same time, having haemorrhaged points earlier in the day, I was very mindful of needing to finish.
“If a genuine opportunity had presented itself, I would obviously have gone for it, but it was all about managing the risk. Rob knew he could take more risks than I could and he played a blinder, and ultimately, second place was far better than both of us ending up in the gravel trap trying to be heroes. It was a good result to conclude a challenging weekend.
“Overall, Sunday was a day of resilience, keeping smiling and thinking of the bigger picture. A major positive is that the car felt fantastic throughout – it was just the fallout from our lack of hybrid that left us on the back foot and susceptible to the perils of racing in the pack. There were several times when it felt like everything was falling apart, but we knew we had had to keep our heads up and that paid off in the end. This championship is all about playing the long game – and there’s a long way still to go.”
Images: Jakob Ebrey Photography