Tom Ingram buoyed by pace despite tricky start

Tom Ingram was left to take the positives from a challenging opening round of the 2026 British Touring Car Championship season, which took place at Donington Park this past weekend.

Donning the mantel of defending champion, the EXCELR8 Motorsport driver endured a rollercoaster weekend which culminated in him sitting eighth in the points.

The series curtain-raiser began with Ingram topping the times in both practice and qualifying. He then claimed victory on the road in the first-ever Qualifying Race however was demoted to second after being handed a time penalty for exceeding track limits.

The Hyundai driver bounced back to win the season-opener on Sunday only to face more heartache as he was disqualified for over-boosting. An alternator failure then prevented him from taking the start of race two.

Starting from the back of the grid for race three, the two-time title winner managed to salvage his weekend as he fought his way up the order to finish in secon.

“It’s a weird feeling at the end of the weekend because I’ve won twice on the road and then bagged a second place finish, but I’m heading home with only 27 points to my name and eighth in the standings,” said the double champion.

“Ultimately it’s been a tricky start but we’ve clearly had the pace as we showed when we topped practice, topped qualifying and then finished nearly five seconds clear of the rest on Saturday.

“It shows that our approach over winter, which was to make sure we were in the best possible to shape to hit the ground running when there there is only limited practice, was the correct one as that is going to be important going forwards and it’s just unfortunate that race three is all we have to show for our efforts on Sunday.

“The blessing in disguise from this weekend is that we’re now going to go to Brands Hatch next time out carrying more turbo boost into qualifying which I think will make a big difference. We’ve just got to take the points we’ve banked here and move on.”