Tom Ingram: “We need to string three races together”

Tom Ingram was pleased with the pace shown in his Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Avensis, but stated there’s still more to come in the afternoon session.

Team BKR’s Aron Smith held the pace for the majority of the session, before Ingram put in a typical late-session time to jump to the top of the standings and take the chequered flag at the head of the timing screens.

“We’ve just got to take that on for the rest of the weekend,” Ingram told TouringCarTimes. “The car felt good, couple of problems to start off with but we sorted it out. Setup wasn’t bang on, but we sorted that out, we’re making progress. We should be heading into FP2 with a stronger car and build on getting a stronger position.”

In recent years Oulton Park has gained a reputation for being difficult to overtake around, making qualifying around the Cheshire circuit one of the most important of the season. Despite this, Ingram states it would be a brave move for anyone to concentrate solely on qualifying.

“We need pace in both,” explained Ingram. “With touring cars it’s that tough that we can’t just sit on one, so we’ll be working on everything in FP2.”

Ingram endured a tough Thruxton meeting, despite finishing second in race one, the Toyota driver had two non-scores, continuing the theme of his season so far where he visits the podium in race one, before having two difficult races in the afternoon.

“The frustrating thing was we knew the car had a lot of pace in it and we couldn’t maximise that out of races two and three. We were quick all weekend and we didn’t string it all together again. The plan this weekend is very much to string all three together.”