Speedworks Motorsport heads into the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship mid-season hiatus optimistic that a ‘breakthrough result’ is just around the corner after threatening the podium in the most recent outing at Croft.

Having uncharacteristically struggled throughout practice in the team’s Hughes Safety Showers-backed Toyota Avensis, standout rookie Tom Ingram qualified 14th amongst the 30 contenders in the immensely popular, ITV4 live-televised BTCC – commonly regarded as the world’s premier and most fiercely-disputed tin-top series, counting as it does no fewer than seven former champions and 13 race-winners within its 2014 crop.

Any hopes of progressing up the order in race one, however, were swiftly dashed when the KX Akademy graduate, British Racing Drivers’ Club (BRDC) SuperStar and MSA Academy member found himself tagged during the opening lap mêlée and sent skating across the gravel, knocking his tracking out-of-line. As his car’s handling increasingly deteriorated, Ingram was forced into defensive mode and gamely clung on to snare the final championship point on offer in 15th position.

Opting to bolt on the softer Dunlop tyres for race two, the 20-year-old assertively and incisively scythed his way through the field to take the chequered flag ninth – which would become eighth following a subsequent exclusion ahead, marking his 11th points finish from 14 starts.

The final, reversed-grid encounter promised even more, and after starting third, Ingram made an early bid to snatch the lead only to be sideswiped by an over-ambitious rival. The contact broke the Avensis’ steering and left the triple Ginetta Champion and erstwhile British Karting Champion a frustrated spectator.

Nonetheless, as the Northwich, Cheshire-based outfit enters the BTCC’s five-week summer break sitting ninth in the teams’ standings out of the 21 protagonists and seventh in the Independents’ Trophy – with Ingram a mere seven markers shy of the top ten in the drivers’ classification – Speedworks team principal Christian Dick is in bullish mood looking to the second half of the campaign.

“Croft was certainly a weekend of ups-and-downs, but then that’s all part-and-parcel of racing in the BTCC,” he reflected. “Saturday was a tough day; we knew we had a good car underneath us, but we couldn’t produce a decent lap time out of it. That theme continued into qualifying, when we weren’t where we felt we should have been – which was inside the top ten. After that, we spent a lot of time debating the set-up and what we could change to improve our chances the next day.

“We chipped away, and 15th in race one was a solid result considering the amount of damage Tom picked up on the first lap through no fault of his own. It did leave us on the back foot somewhat for race two, but his performance on the soft tyres was mega impressive as he fought his way up through the field.

“The reversed-grid then worked in our favour, and we were confident we were one of the few cars on the right rubber for race three. Tom was fired-up and had really found his mojo round Croft in the Avensis, and we felt we were on a roll – but it just goes to show that the BTCC doesn’t always go according to plan.

“Obviously the DNF was disappointing, because Tom has proven on many occasions that he is capable of leading races from the front and managing that kind of situation. I would like to think it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that we could have won – a podium was on the cards at the very least – but overall, we have to be happy that we again displayed the pace to do battle up towards the sharp end and came away with more points in the bag.

“I don’t think anybody is in any doubt that we have developed the Avensis into a consistent top ten car and Tom is getting stronger all the time; he has clearly found his feet in the BTCC now, which means we can afford to be a little bit more daring in terms of our strategy and set-up moving forward.

“Tom is a little star, and I’m hopeful that with some hard work over the summer, once the championship resumes at Snetterton next month, we will be able to fight for podiums and even race victories. It’s only a matter of time before we achieve a breakthrough result and start worrying the front-runners on a more regular basis.”