Tom Ingram retains advantage at Thruxton

Tom Ingram admitted that he had turned expectations on their head after extending his lead in the BTCC standings at Thruxton.

The Speedworks man moved 17 points clear of Gordon Shedden in the standings with a solid performance on track that included two podium finishes; a fine comeback from two difficult practice sessions on Saturday that had seen his Toyota uncharacteristically off the pace.

Ingram now has five podium finishes to his name this season and insisted that the aim now was to try and strengthen his advantage when the series heads to Oulton Park for Speedworks’ home meeting next time out.

“We’ve come away from the weekend with an extended lead which no-one expected,” he said. “We knew it would be tough after practice, but the boys did a lot of hard work to turn things around and give us a strong car for qualifying and one that was strong in the races.

“We’ve been able to pick up some serious points and a bit more of buffer to take to Oulton, where we need try and minimise our losses to the rear wheel drive cars and also keep our lead over Gordon.

“We worked hard over the winter to improve our consistency and we know what we need to do and where we have to score the points. As we did here, we’ll go to Oulton Park and try to score as many points as we can.”