Tom Ingram digs deep at Knockhill to maintain BTCC points lead

Tom Ingram kept his cool to remain at the summit of the British Touring Car Championship standings at Knockhill, after having to produce a superb race day fight back which culminated in a podium finish.

The EXCELR8 Motorsport driver headed into the weekend in Scotland with a comfortable buffer to the chasing pack however a lowly qualifying performance and a non-finish in race one soon closed things up.

Battling his way into the top ten in race two, the Hyundai driver lined up third for the reverse grid contest – which culminated in a thrilling wheel-to-wheel battle with Rob Huff for overall honours.

Huff would come out on top this time around but Ingram’s ability to outscore his championship rivals means that he now heads into the next round at Donington Park holding a three-point advantage over Jake Hill.

“That was a tricky weekend, you might say,” he said. “We had calculated that our lack of hybrid would realistically equate to a deficit of around half-a-second per lap at Knockhill, so qualifying was always going to be a struggle with only one second of it to deploy. We were next-to-nothing away from making it into Q2, but in all honesty, I don’t think that would have made any major difference to our grid position.

“The aim from there was to fight our way through and haul ourselves into the mix for race three while simultaneously trying to stay out of trouble, which clearly turned out to be easier said than done! I got caught up in drama in race one, got ‘Smileyed’ in race two and then had to try to recover again from there, which I think we did as best we could. We needed some luck to turn things around and thankfully, the reversed grid draw gave us that chance.

“That one was good fun! ‘Huffy’ is a world-class driver who I grew up watching and admiring while he was competing in the WTCC, and it’s an absolute pleasure to race so closely against somebody like that. I tried to put him under pressure and there were some cracks appearing that allowed me to stick my nose in and get the overlap on a few occasions, but at the same time, having haemorrhaged points earlier in the day, I was very mindful of needing to finish.

“If a genuine opportunity had presented itself, I would obviously have gone for it, but it was all about managing the risk. Rob knew he could take more risks than I could and he played a blinder, and ultimately, second place was far better than both of us ending up in the gravel trap trying to be heroes. It was a good result to conclude a challenging weekend.

“Overall, Sunday was a day of resilience, keeping smiling and thinking of the bigger picture. A major positive is that the car felt fantastic throughout – it was just the fallout from our lack of hybrid that left us on the back foot and susceptible to the perils of racing in the pack. There were several times when it felt like everything was falling apart, but we knew we had had to keep our heads up and that paid off in the end. This championship is all about playing the long game – and there’s a long way still to go.”