Tom Ingram: “At least it beat last year…”

Tom Ingram was keen to look at the positives after a battling performance on home soil for his Speedworks team in the latest rounds of the BTCC season.

Having seen the wheels come off his title challenge at Oulton Park last year, Ingram went into the weekend hoping for an improved performance on track, although the success ballast on his Toyota Avensis was always going to make things tough.

Having qualified down in 17th spot, Ingram battled into the points in race one and then secured tenth in race two – setting the fastest lap of the race in the process with the additional ballast having been removed.

A sixth place finish in race three ensures that he heads away from Oulton Park sitting fourth in the standings and keen to ‘claw back ground’ when the series now moves on to Croft for the final meeting before the summer break.

“At least it was much better than last year!” he said. “Saying that, there was a fair bit of head-scratching going on after qualifying. We knew we weren’t going to be fighting for pole position, but we were hoping to be somewhere inside the top ten.

“The car was actually very nicely-balanced, even with the ballast on-board and I felt I got the best out of it that I could in the circumstances, but unfortunately, that was only good enough for 17th, which left us properly on the back foot.

“The positive is that we moved forward in all three races. Ultimately, we salvaged as much as we could from the weekend and we didn’t lose out too much points-wise. We’re still right up there and will carry a bit less weight with us to Croft, which is a circuit I love. I’m confident we’ll be in good shape, so let’s see if we can claw back some ground…”