Tom Ingram edged closer to the summit of the Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship standings at Brands Hatch last weekend (10-11 May), with a pair of podium finishes and a new lap record around the ‘Indy’ circuit bolstering his bid for a second career crown in the UK’s premier motor racing series.
Ingram impressed in practice and turned up the wick further when it counted in qualifying – although it very nearly all went wrong in Part 1 of Qualifying. The Team VERTU star had just put his Hyundai i30N at the top of the timing screens when the red flags flew to retrieve a car beached in the gravel trap, but a misunderstanding as he entered the pit-lane resulted in him missing a signal to go to the weighbridge – and all of his lap times consequently being erased.
Needing do it all over again, the pressure was on – but Ingram vaulted immediately back up to first place on his first 'flying' lap back on track. The #80 then similarly progressed through Part 2 of Qualifying, bearing in mind his limited turbo boost allocation – Ingram had just three seconds per lap due to his elevated championship standing.
An error in the ‘Quick Six’ shootout denied the 31-year-old the chance for pole position, but in front of the live ITV4 television cameras and a large, sun-kissed trackside crowd the following day, he signalled his intentions straightaway in race one by sweeping around the outside of team-mate Adam Morgan through Paddock Hill Bend to advance from fourth to third.
Thereafter, the Hyundai i30 N driver would ultimately settle for a fourth consecutive rostrum finish in 2025, not wanting to over-stress his soft tyres in the hot conditions.
The result meant Ingram would have to use the hard-compound rubber in race two and after finding himself on the grass to avoid a clash directly ahead along the Cooper Straight on lap six, the 2022 champion proceeded to take the chequered flag 11th.
Back on the soft tyres for the day’s finale and with a full complement of turbo boost at his disposal, Ingram got his elbows out on the opening tour to climb to seventh. His next target — Aiden Moffat's LKQ Euro Car Parts Racing with WSR BMW — was behind come lap four, with championship leader Ash Sutton displaced from fifth not long after.
While those early exchanges cost him four seconds to the leaders, once in clear air, the 33-time race winner obliterated the existing lap record and went on to overhaul both Chris Smiley and Dan Rowbottom. After Jake Hill’s Laser Tools Racing with MB Motorsport BMW fell foul to traffic, Ingram tried every which way to prise the door ajar to snatch the runner-up spoils, but with the BMW 330i M Sport driver defending hard, he crossed the finish line third – meaning he will travel to Snetterton in Norfolk on 24/25 May just five points adrift of the top of the table.
Tom Ingram, Driver, Team VERTU, said: “That was another very strong weekend, all-in-all. The car felt phenomenal throughout – doing everything I asked of it and an absolute pleasure to drive – although I almost got us knocked out of qualifying in Q1! The red flags came out just as I was going into the final corner, so by the time I’d made sure there was no-one else near me, slowed down, cut across to the pit-lane, turned my headlights off and turned my pit-lane speed-limiter on, there were red flashing lights all around the circuit and I didn’t see the tiny red light that tells you to go onto the scales...
“Fortunately, we regrouped and got through, but I messed up again at the end of Q3. I was the best part of three tenths-of-a-second up when I tried to deploy turbo boost too early and inadvertently locked myself out of it. That cost us the front row of the grid or maybe even pole, but fourth place still put us in the mix for race day.
“With the hot weather, I think we were all conscious of taking it a little bit more steadily than usual on the soft tyres in race one, to ensure we got to the end. Their extra boost was always going to play into Jake [Hill] and Charles [Rainford]’s hands, and Charles drove extremely well and didn’t give me any real opportunity to stick my nose in, so I was happy to settle for third and another solid points haul.
“In race two, we got swamped by other cars around us on softs, but the Hyundai still felt good on the hard tyres, which was very encouraging. Then in race three, with more turbo boost in-hand, we knew we could be a bit more strategic, and Jake and I had a good battle over the last couple of laps.
“I used my additional boost to catch up and try to attack, but he never gave me the option to go to the inside, so I had to try the outside and with neither of us willing to give an inch, it certainly got pretty close! Could we have had a shot at winning if we’d not lost so much time fighting through the pack early on? Possibly, but the bottom line is we’re still in a really good place – and I see no reason why that shouldn’t continue season-long.”
