Tom Ingram has only one ambition for the 2025 Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship season – the successful conquest of a second career crown – and he is aiming to get that bid off to the best possible start in the forthcoming curtain-raising contest at Donington Park (26-27 April).
 
Few drivers can match Ingram’s stellar record around the challenging Leicestershire circuit. Since 2022 – the year that he first lifted the laurels in the UK’s premier motor racing series – the Bucks-born driver has triumphed there four times.
 
Three of those victories were achieved on the ‘National’ layout that will be used this weekend, with the other coming on the slightly longer ‘GP’ loop, while five further podium finishes over the same period mean that in recent campaigns, Ingram has reached the rostrum at Donington more often than not.
 
Behind the wheel of his #80 Hyundai i30N, the Team Vertu star similarly outpaced all of his rivals for much of the ‘Media Day’ test at the track last week. He eventually wound up a competitive fifth on the timesheets amongst the 23 high-calibre protagonists, after focussing on longer runs rather than single-lap speed when conditions were at their quickest.
 
Last season, Ingram notched up no fewer than six race wins, 15 podiums, four pole positions and ten fastest laps in the BTCC. In so doing, he oh-so-nearly added a second Drivers’ title to his impressive résumé, with only the changeable weather in the Brands Hatch GP finale denying him the biggest prize in British motorsport and restricting him to the runner-up spoils. Spurred on by that disappointment, the 31-year-old is ready and fired-up to fight back.
 
Following Saturday afternoon’s qualifying session at Donington Park at 15:10 – streamed on ITV Sport’s YouTube channel – every moment of Sunday’s doorhandle-to-doorhandle action will be broadcast live and in high-definition on ITV4 and ITVX, beginning at 11:00. The full race day schedule will additionally be streamed live around the globe on the BTCC YouTube channel, with the exception of the UK and North America, where there are existing broadcast agreements in-place with RACER Network.
 
Tom Ingram, Driver, Team Vertu, said: “I think we’re in good shape. We’ve done a lot of testing over the off-season, which has gone very well. We seem to have found quite a chunk of extra pace from the Hyundai – and it was already arguably the fastest car in the field – but even more importantly, I’m 95 per cent certain we’ve managed to identify the cause of the issue we encountered in low-grip conditions last year, which was ultimately what cost us the title. Although testing has been primarily dry, I think we have been able to pinpoint where we were going wrong.
 
“The regulations reset over the winter – replacing the hybrid system with sustainable fuel and turbo boost – has removed about 55kg of weight, which in-turn has made a sizeable difference to how the car feels. We’ve had to revisit and re-optimise the whole package as a result, which has almost been like starting all over again.
 
“There’s no question that the season is going to be incredibly competitive, and consistency – as ever in the BTCC – will be absolutely key, but more than that, with 15 race-winning drivers on the grid, the level in the championship is so high now that consistently finishing fifth or sixth is no longer enough. You need to be finishing consistently on the podium if you want to be in with a genuine chance, and that is clearly our objective.
 
“Donington has traditionally been a happy hunting-ground for us – particularly in recent years – and I see no reason why we can’t win again this weekend. The aim is very much to come out-of-the-blocks fighting, and at the end of the day, my goal is simple – I want the title back.”