Ingram races to rostrum despite 'fairly tricky' championship opener
Tom Ingram experienced all the emotions as the 2026 Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship campaign burst into life at Donington Park last weekend (18/19 April), twice finding himself stripped of victory prior to storming through the field from 21st to second.
The reigning champion in the UK’s premier motor racing series, Ingram signalled his intent straightaway by topping the timesheets in free practice on Saturday morning as he confidently launched his bid to clinch a third career crown. He repeated the feat in qualifying, pipping fellow multiple title-winner Ash Sutton to pole position for the new ‘Race to Pole’ by a mere eight thousandths-of-a-second in a fiercely-disputed session.
After fending off a particularly feisty Sutton, Dan Cammish and Dan Rowbottom over the course of a breathless opening lap – repelling a succession of determined attacks – the Team VERTU star settled into the lead, but then news filtered through that he had been handed a five-second penalty for an out-of-position start.
Ingram would fall short of glory by a scant 0.024 seconds at the chequered flag. Second place nonetheless earned him a front row starting slot for the first of Sunday’s traditional trio of full-length contests. Despite being the lone driver inside the top five on the grid to elect to bolt on the medium-compound Goodyear rubber – preferring to keep the quicker soft option until later in the day – the talented Bucks-born ace was on course for his 41st BTCC triumph; however, the #80 Hyundai i30N was found to have registered a significant overboost infringement, seeing Ingram disqualified from the results.
An alternator failure forced him out of race two before it had even begun, translating into a second consecutive non-score, but the one saving grace was that he still had his soft tyres to run in the day’s finale. He made excellent use of them.
From 21st and last on the grid in the high-calibre field, Ingram produced one of his trademark recovery charges in front of the live ITV4 television cameras and capacity trackside crowd. Artfully avoiding a spinning rival into Redgate Corner and a two-car collision directly ahead, the 32-year-old was up to ninth within just four laps, in the midst of a multi-car scrap for second.
He proceeded to thrill fans by sweeping boldly around the outside of Adam Morgan going down the Craner Curves, before toughing it out with a combative Aiden Moffat, finding himself squeezed towards the grass on the main straight but keeping his foot firmly planted to steal fourth place. Ingram thereafter demoted Dan Cammish and new EXCELR8 Motorsport team-mate Ricky Collard to deservedly scoop the runner-up spoils, flashing across the finish line barely two seconds shy of victory.
Fastest lap earned him an extra point, and the Coventry-based racer will next travel to Brands Hatch’s short ‘Indy’ circuit (9/10 May), sitting eighth in the standings – with his sights solidly set on climbing the order and kick-starting his title defence.
Tom Ingram, Driver, Team VERTU, said: “The start of a new season is always really exciting, and I arrived at Donington feeling very relaxed. It was incredibly close in qualifying, with everybody on the same TOCA Turbo Boost (TTB) for the only time all year, and the refreshed Saturday format means you need to be mindful of looking after everything for the ‘Race to Pole’, which feels quite counter-intuitive in a qualifying session!
“There was obviously a little bit of a mess-up in terms of parking on the grid; I always give myself a margin for error in that respect, but clearly it wasn’t quite enough. I got the call over the radio fairly early on that I had a penalty incoming, so I just had to get my head down and try to build as much of a gap as I could and we so very nearly overturned it.
“To still finish second in the circumstances put us in a good place for Sunday’s first race, which went really well on-track, but it subsequently transpired that there had been a glitch with the new TTB system and for some reason, it hadn’t worked as it should have done in my car. There was no performance gain whatsoever, so that was really tough to take, but we fell outside of the regulations so that was that – and then the alternator decided to stop alternating before the start of race two!
“From there, we had to try to recover whatever we could from race three to make sure we got something out of the weekend. It was hard work, starting so far back and knowing I needed to take some risks but also knowing I couldn’t afford another non-score after losing so many points earlier in the day, meaning it was imperative to avoid doing anything reckless or getting caught up in any incidents.
“The car felt phenomenal and I was really pumped-up, and it was full-on the whole way through. I left absolutely nothing on the table – I don’t think I’ve ever given the tyres such a hard workout before and I probably came perilously close to picking up a track limits penalty, but I just had to keep cracking on. I used the boost where I needed to and picked my battles, and while I ultimately lost too much time fighting through the pack to be able to challenge for the win, I thoroughly enjoyed myself!
“It was a fairly tricky weekend overall – being so fast and winning two races on the road but not getting to keep either of them was a hard pill to swallow – but to end it back on the podium was positive. We’ll also be in a fairly decent position TTB-wise now going to Brands Hatch, where we’ll look to secure the kind of results we should have come away with from Donington Park.”