Tom Ingram keen to bounce back from Knockhill disappointment

Tom Ingram is already looking ahead to the British Touring Car Championship’s return to Donington Park in a few weeks time after enduring a bruising outing at Knockhill this past weekend.

On what was billed as being a pivotal round in the race for the title, the reigning champion lost ground to Ash Sutton in the standings and now sits 81 points behind the Alliance Racing driver with four events remaining.

After a battling Saturday at the Scottish circuit, the EXCELR8 driver faced an issue with his car in race one but despite that setback, he was still able to fight his way up to fifth come the chequered flag.

Race two would unfortunately not go the same way however as the two-time title winner sustained race-ending damage to the front of his Hyundai when the cars in front bunched up through the chicane.

Faced with the prospect of starting the weekend’s third and final contest from the back of the grid, Ingram was able to sign off an otherwise challenging weekend on a positive note as he surged up to tenth place.

“As a team, it’s good to have come away from Knockhill with some trophies but it’s been a bruising weekend for me personally, and one where the only luck I had was bad luck,” said Ingram.

“Had it not been for track limits, we’d have been up on the third row of the grid for the qualifying race rather than stuck in the pack where it was hard to try and make progress with the amount of boost that we had.

“We had an issue with the car in race one that meant I didn’t get the best of starts but we still managed to climb to fifth, and then in race two going into the chicane, the guys in front concertinaed up and there was nowhere to go. It didn’t look like the biggest of hits but it did a lot of damage, and that was game over.

“Because of the issues in the first two races, we changed the engine for race three, and that is probably the high point of the weekend for me because the team did an outrageous job to get that sorted in 45 minutes – it was an unbelievable effort.

“To come from the back of the grid to finish in the top ten was good in terms of making up places, but obviously we’ve not scored the points we were hoping for this weekend which is disappointing. However, we’ll keep pushing hard and will come out fighting when we get to Donington Park in a few weeks time.”