BTCC sophomore defies contact for three points finishes

Tom Ingram admitted to feeling ‘like a pinball’ in the latest outing of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship at Silverstone, but the talented young Bucks ace refused to lie down and his reward was a trio of points-scoring finishes. Fresh off the back of scooping a sensational breakthrough BTCC podium at Rockingham three weeks earlier, Ingram reprised his front-running form at Silverstone by featuring right up at the sharp end during free practice. He ultimately wound up fifth-quickest amongst the 30 high-calibre protagonists behind the wheel of his Speedworks Motorsport-prepared Toyota Avensis, in what is by common consent the world’s most fiercely-disputed tin-top series. A flurry of ultra-consistent lap times in qualifying subsequently secured the British Racing Drivers’ Club (BRDC) SuperStar an excellent seventh on the grid – a scant 0.041 seconds adrift of third place and barely a tenth-of-a-second shy of the front row. Ingram warmed up for race day by driving a Dunlop truck around the circuit for his sponsor the Road Haulage Association (RHA), before returning to his more regular ‘office’ for the three ITV4 live-televised contests. In the opener, a slipping clutch at the start saw him fall to ninth, but he swiftly recovered one of the lost positions and settled into a multi-car scrap over third until Rob Collard aggressively muscled his way past, which dropped him to the foot of the top ten. The Hansford Sensors-supported KX Akademy graduate and MSA Academy member fought back to clinch ninth spot at the chequered flag – his 17th top ten finish of what has been an impressive sophomore BTCC campaign in 2015 – but finding himself caught up in battles early on meant he had been unable to post a strong lap time towards the grid for race two, which he would begin a lowly 15th. A bright start nonetheless allowed Ingram to initially hassle double title-winner Jason Plato, but with the more rapidly degrading soft-compound tyres on his Avensis, he was later forced to stage a dogged defence and withstood tremendous pressure to bring his car home in 13th place. The fact that he set only the 21st-best lap of the race underlined just what a struggle it had been. Back on the more durable harder rubber for the final encounter, the three-time Ginetta Champion and former British Karting Champion immediately outfoxed a couple of adversaries to advance to 11th, but a brace of sideswipes from Aiden Moffat at Luffield required Ingram to call upon all of his car control to pull off a remarkable save – not the first of the weekend, nor indeed the last. Following a safety car intervention for a collision at the rear of the order, last year’s standout BTCC rookie went on the attack. Lights ablaze and lapping second-fastest on the track, he despatched hometown rival Jack Goff and multiple World Touring Car Champion Andy Priaulx in quick succession before reclaiming tenth place from Moffat, only for the Scot to rudely barge his way past once again by tipping the Toyota sideways. That resigned Ingram to 11th at the flag – nursing a car with barely a straight panel left on it – and as he looks forward to the Brands Hatch season finale in a fortnight’s time sitting 12th in the overall classification and fifth in the Independents’ Trophy, he does so eager to ‘have some fun’.“As the ‘Home of British Motorsport’ and somewhere with so much history behind it, it’s always special to go to Silverstone and the stop-start nature of the short National Circuit layout tends to generate extremely close racing,” reflected the 22-year-old – the second-youngest competitor in the field.“We were happy with seventh in qualifying – yes, with just a few hundredths more we could have been up in third, but when everybody was that tightly-packed we could equally have ended up some way further down. I actually set my best lap without the benefit of the tow, so we knew we had decent potential and that we were firmly in the mix.“In race one, we had a clutch issue at the start that cost us a couple of positions and left me behind two of the VWs, which are never easy to overtake because they’re so fast in a straight line. I was hanging onto their coat-tails until Collard decided he was going to bully his way past which most likely denied us seventh place, but ninth was still a solid result and another top ten finish.“Unfortunately, being caught up amongst a gaggle of cars early on meant I was unable to set a good lap time for the race two grid, which has been a challenge we’ve faced all year. To compound matters, we tweaked the set-up to manage the soft tyres better but probably went too far and they faded really quickly, so I was playing a defensive game virtually the whole way through. I certainly wasn’t going to give up without a fight and had to work pretty hard to secure the points that we did.“We made several changes to try to extract a bit more performance in race three and the Avensis felt really strong. The problem we had was that the contact from Moffat completely shifted the balance of the car. The steering was no longer straight and it felt nervous to drive. I finally found a way back past after I got a really good tow, and then he simply fired me off again! I felt like a pinball out there...“Obviously 11th wasn’t the result we had been targeting, but we knew Silverstone wasn’t necessarily going to be the best track on the calendar for us so there was always an element of damage limitation to the weekend. We’re confident Brands Hatch GP should suit us a lot better. I got my highest finish of the season there last year, and it’s a proper old-school drivers’ circuit. We’re not involved in the title battle and don’t have a great deal to lose, so the gloves will be well-and-truly off and hopefully we can get stuck in and really have some fun.”