Tom Ingram delivered Speedworks Motorsport a timely fillip in the fourth outing of the 2014 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship campaign at Oulton Park, with an impressive double top ten finish that included the finest result of his fledgling BTCC career to-date.
Speedworks team principal Christian Dick had been injured only a week earlier in a racing accident in the Netherlands, leaving Ingram determined to lift the squad’s spirits with a strong showing at their home event.
After lagging some way shy of the leading pace in practice, the talented young High Wycombe ace pulled it all together when it truly mattered to place his Hughes-backed Toyota Avensis an excellent ninth on the race one starting grid amongst the 31 contenders in the ITV4 live-televised championship – commonly regarded as the world’s premier and most fiercely-contested tin-top series.
The performance marked Ingram’s third top ten qualifying effort out of four in touring cars and represented a tremendous boost for the whole team at the end of a particularly tough week. He maintained the position right the way through to the chequered flag in the opening encounter, towards the front of a marauding, nose-to-tail ten-car snake – underscoring the sheer competitiveness of the BTCC in this momentous season – and ahead of no fewer than four former champions.
In race two, the blu and Hansford Sensors-supported KX Akademy graduate was one of only three drivers in the field to plump for the faster – but also faster-degrading – soft rubber. Following an early battle with multiple European touring car champion Fabrizio Giovanardi, Ingram settled into the midst of a frenetic 16-car scrap over third place with no more than half-a-second separating any of the protagonists.
Artfully preserving his tyres – always one of his strengths – the 20-year-old British Racing Drivers’ Club (BRDC) SuperStar and MSA Academy member opportunistically took advantage of a last lap duel between Mat Jackson and Sam Tordoff to dive past the latter into Lodge Corner, intelligently anticipating the gap opening up and making it just wide enough to slot an Avensis down the inside.
The bold manoeuvre earned Ingram a superb seventh position – and with it, a front row start for the day’s reversed-grid finale. A wet-but-drying track surface promised the kind of tailor-made conditions in which the three-time Ginetta Champion and former British Karting Champion has invariably excelled – but sadly, he never got the chance to show what he could do.
As his race three curse struck yet again – for the third time in four meetings – the #80 car suddenly slowed and came to a halt on the first lap with fuel pressure failure, cruelly dashing Ingram’s hopes for a fairytale ending to what had been another outstanding weekend. Still, with his highest points haul thus far – leaving him 12th in the championship standings and tenth in the Independents’ classification – he knows he has more than made his mark.
“I’ve always loved Oulton Park and I’ve always gone well there,” mused the BTCC’s leading rookie. “The International layout is undulating and fast-and-flowing – a real drivers’ circuit – and I enjoy the challenge it presents. We struggled during practice – not helped by the changeable weather – but we made some big changes to the set-up ahead of qualifying and they really paid off.
“Race one was a very solid result, and the most encouraging aspect was that we were quick and consistent throughout. Since the previous round at Thruxton, we had worked really hard on turning the Avensis from a car that was fast over a single lap into one capable of maintaining that pace over a full race distance – because it had tended to fade in the closing stages. We tried out a lot of different things – some of which worked and some didn’t – but the upshot was that we took a significant step forward.
“I’m now starting to really get my head around the car and properly understand it; the Avensis is a much more sophisticated piece of kit than anything I’ve ever driven before, and getting used to front wheel-drive for the first time in my career has been a learning curve, too.
“In race two, I was expecting the soft tyres to really drop off towards the end, but they held on very well. I saw Tordoff making mistakes and running wide over the course of the last lap, but I never thought he would leave the door open as long as he did into the final corner. What made that result extra-special after everything that had happened the previous week was that Christian was there to see it, and it was great to put a smile on his face.
“Race three was obviously a massive disappointment because we were confident the podium was within reach in conditions that have always suited me, but these things happen and there are still so many positives to take away. We were the most competitive we have been so far – which is testament to all the hard work the Speedworks guys have put in this year – and next we go to Croft, one of my favourite tracks on the calendar, with the goal of keeping this upward momentum going.”
