Tom Ingram: “It’s not over until the fat lady sings”

Tom Ingram insists that he will keep fighting hard in his bid to secure a maiden BTCC title despite his championship hopes taking a hit at Silverstone.

The Speedworks driver had headed into the sixth meeting of the season looking to build on a double win at Thruxton that had launched him right back into contention, and put his Toyota Corolla on the front row of the grid in qualifying.

A strong run in the opening race saw Ingram secure second place the Honda of Dan Cammish, and when he then cleared the Team Dynamics man on the opening lap of race two, another Silverstone success was very much on the cards.

Unfortunately, a near certain victory disappeared in the closing stages when he suffered a puncture and was forced into the pits, and things then went from bad to worse in race three when he was caught up in a clash between Team HARD team-mates Carl Boardley and Tom Onslow-Cole that forced him to retire.

“It’s been a tough day and it’s amazing how quickly things can change,” he said. “We had a really good result in the opening race with the podium finish and then we were on for an even better one in race two before the puncture.

“There was no warning at all and the car felt really good – I was in control. I could see behind that Colin [Turkington] had managed to get ahead of Dan and for me that was a good thing because I knew he wasn’t going to do anything stupid and would settle for the points, so I was just bringing the car home for the win.

“Suddenly going into Becketts there was a big bang and that was it. It was so frustrating because I wasn’t pushing too hard and that put us to the back for race three. There, I got caught up in an incident and that was a tough end to what could have been a great weekend.

“We’re not out of it although we’ve dropped to fourth and are a bit further behind in the standings than we should have been after this weekend. It isn’t over until the fat lady sings as they say.”