Tom Ingram is the new leader of the 2010 Ginetta Junior Championship, courtesy of a brilliant double podium finish in treacherous conditions in the third round of the season at Brands Hatch’s legendary GP circuit – and now he is hoping to extend that advantage next time out around a track at which last year he proved untouchable.
Brands GP staged the prestigious British Grand Prix – the UK outing on the F1 calendar – on 12 occasions between 1964 and 1986, and on Tom’s first appearance there at the end of his maiden campaign in cars in the BTCC-supporting Ginetta Junior closed-top sportscar series in 2009, he had finished an encouraging seventh.
Palpably a circuit that the highly-rated young High Wycombe star enjoys, he also entered the weekend tempered by the knowledge that many of his adversaries – in particular chief title rival Jake Hill, whose ‘home’ track it is into the bargain – had been able to conduct prior testing there that his own shoe-string budget simply does not allow for.
Worse still, upon arriving in Kent on Thursday night, Tom and his Hillspeed team had a scare when they discovered that his G40 was in need of a new steering rack as the legacy of having been driven into on the final lap of the second race at Rockingham the weekend previously – what the 16-year-old described as ‘a huge setback’ and another unwelcome and unaffordable expense. Not, all-in-all, the ideal way to begin.
“I hadn’t had much time around the GP circuit,” he acknowledged, “whereas a lot of the other drivers had done a fair bit of testing there. I knew the first part of the track – the Indy layout – relatively well, but over the back it’s quite difficult because you really need to link it all up together, and if you lose momentum in just one corner it tends to cost you for the rest of the lap. The aim was to get some more solid points on the board, though, so I just had to keep my confidence up and do my best.”
A circumspect approach throughout practice – maturely reasoning that Fridays are all about track time, not lap time – saw Tom improve from almost three seconds adrift of the outright pace in the first session to just seven tenths by the last, as he featured consistently and impressively inside the top four.
That form was converted into fourth and fifth spots on the grid in qualifying, with the 2006 British Karting Champion ruing having had nobody to follow or whose tow to benefit from – never to be underestimated in Ginetta Juniors – and having had to judge the slippery track conditions for himself, something that he admitted set him at ‘a bit of a disadvantage’. He would swiftly make amends come the races.
“I got a really good start and was almost leading by the first corner,” Tom recounted of race one. “I tried to go round the outside of Jody Fannin into Paddock Hill Bend, but I couldn’t quite do it so I dropped in behind in second place. I then tried to go up the inside into the next corner, but he cut me off again. After that I concentrated on pushing Jody away and we had just started to open up a gap over the chasing pack when the safety car came out, which was a bit annoying.
“At the re-start, Tom Howard got a good run on me up the inside into Paddock Hill Bend, and I didn’t fight him too hard because there was no point in us both ending up in the gravel. On the last lap the three of us all pretty much pushed each other towards the line, literally just inches apart!”
Indeed, a scant two tenths of a second blanketed the trio at the chequered flag, and with Hill excluded from the results for a first lap collision, Tom confessed that he was happy with third and the extra point he earned for fastest lap. On Sunday, though, the Conway House-backed speed demon would face a real journey into the unknown, as the heaves opened with a vengeance to unleash a torrential downpour that soaked the circuit. He might never have driven the car in the wet before, but judging by his superb performance, you would have been hard-pressed to tell.
“I got a relatively good start, tried to keep out of trouble to begin with and managed to get up to fourth,” he related. “Then the safety car came out again which bunched the whole pack up, and I was right on the back of Howard in third. I tried to overtake him going into Graham Hill Bend but he defended his position really well, so I dropped back in behind and then went to the outside at Surtees to try to catch him off-guard – and as we both braked, I dived to the inside when he wasn’t expecting it.
“I hung him out wide to make sure of keeping the place, and then Alex Austin spun literally right in front of both of us on the exit! I didn’t see him until the last second, and it was quite a scary moment – I missed him by what seemed like a couple of inches at most...
“That moved me up to second behind Jake Hill, and over the next lap I was really pulling him in. I just focussed on consistently reducing that gap, but I made a small mistake into Druids, running a bit wide on the entry and subsequently getting on the power a touch too soon.
“I then had a big moment into Paddock Hill Bend at the start of the last lap, so after that I just concentrated on keeping second rather than risk throwing it off – it was more solid points, a great result for the team and I couldn’t have come out of the weekend in any better place!”
Wisely concluding that discretion was the better part of valour, Tom eased off around the remainder of the final tour to seal his first-ever double rostrum in cars – and with it snatch the lead in the chase for the coveted crown. The highest scorer of anyone over the weekend, the result also underlined the former Wycombe and Marlow Sports Personality of the Year’s stellar consistency as the only competitor to have finished inside the top five in every one of the opening six races of the 2010 campaign – and that, he points out, ‘is the ideal way to win championships’.
Better yet, the next stop on the schedule at the beginning of June is Oulton Park in Cheshire, where on his first visit last year Tom proved to be utterly dominant, storming to a double pole position around arguably the country’s greatest drivers’ track – by the staggering margin of almost half a second for race two – only to see his charge quite literally torpedoed when another driver spun straight across his bows in the opening encounter, causing a significant degree of damage. At a circuit that rewards real talent like few others, he makes it clear that 12 months on he is aiming to finish the job off.
“I think some of the others will be doing quite a lot of testing between now and then, whereas we probably won’t be able to due to lack of budget,” he concluded, “but it’s my favourite track in the country and we went really well there last year. Unfortunately, obviously, it didn’t end the way we wanted it to – but hopefully we can put that right this time round...”
Tom is seeking sponsorship to be able to complete the 2010 season; if you are interested in backing him, please call 07817 883469 or e-mail: tom@ingram26.fsnet.co.uk
