Team VERTU’s Tom Ingram lamented a series of ‘unfortunate events’ which saw his points deficit to title rival Ash Sutton in the British Touring Car Championship grow at Thruxton.
Having been eighth fastest in Saturday’s sole practice session, Ingram flew to a front-row grid position in the afternoon’s qualifying session, despite having only two seconds of TOCA Turbo Boost [TTB] per lap, duly converting that into second on the grid after Saturday’s qualifying race.
Sunday’s opening race then saw Ingram defending from a fast-starting Ash Sutton, the NAPA Racing UK driver followed hot-on-the-wheels by team-mate Dan Cammish.
The duo forced Ingram out wide at Goodwood, with light contact from Cammish forcing Ingram wide and dropping him to ninth.
The EXCELR8 Motorsport-run driver then fought back to fifth by the chequered flag, but with Sutton finishing in second, further points were haemorrhaged in the title battle.
In race two, Ingram had fought up to second, as Sutton went on to claim victory, but a key moment came when the Hyundai driver passed Toyota’s Josh Cook for second at the final chicane.
Contact between the duo saw Ingram cut the chicane, and having already been warned for track limits exceedances and actually posting a faster time on the lap he cut the chicane, Ingram found himself handed a post-race ten-second penalty for the incident.
That dropped him back to fifth, although as a result actually aided his grid position for the final race of the day, where he would start from second for the partially-reversed-grid race.
Overtaking pole-sitter James Dorlin on the opening lap of the race, Ingram never looked back and went on to claim his second win of the season, despite later being handed a five-second penalty for reversing on the grid.
Thankfully, having been aware of the penalty, Ingram had pushed to open up a lead of more than five seconds over Sutton, allowing him to keep the win and limit the growing points deficit to his rival to 59 points leaving the Hampshire circuit.
“Frustrating is the word, I think,” exclaimed Ingram. “Having haemorrhaged so many championship points at the beginning of the season, I went to Thruxton looking for a quiet weekend with no drama, but we seemed to be a magnet for drama in every race!
“Given the championship situation, we had no option but to adopt a full-attack mentality.
“The car didn’t feel great in free practice, but we worked really hard and made some fairly fundamental changes. It consequently felt quite a lot better in qualifying, even if we were clearly lacking some boost.
“I was very pleased with the ‘Race to Pole’. I got away well at the lights and put up a bit of a challenge against Josh, but I knew he had a decent chunk more boost than I did and would have the legs once everything settled down.
“Thruxton can be a difficult place to overtake unless you have a significant advantage over the car ahead because you get caught up in the dirty air, so I was happy to shadow him.
“There were a few circumstances that went against us at the start of Sunday’s first race. Ash gave me a couple of nudges, which enabled him to get to my right-hand side going through Noble.
“He then checked-up early for Goodwood, meaning I had to go to his left and that allowed Cammish up my inside, but Dan clipped the kerb, which fired him into me and sent me onto the grass. We were lucky not to have a big accident.
“After that, I spent the majority of the race in traffic, which caused all of the temperatures in the car to skyrocket. In that kind of scenario, it’s so difficult to make progress, but the Hyundai felt fantastic and it was very positive that we had the speed to come back through even with such little TTB.
“In race two, I had a good first few laps, then gradually closed on Josh. I decided to begin deploying my boost and managed to get him going up the hill, but we had a coming-together at the chicane. I had no option but to jump it, which obviously contravened track limits and resulted in a penalty.
“From there, I went into race three aiming to at least salvage something from the weekend. My engineer, Spence [Aldridge], came over the radio early on to tell me my start was under investigation and that I needed to try to build a five-second gap, which is never easy to achieve against Ash, especially as I knew he would be pushing hard as well in an effort to stay within that window.
“With that hanging over me, I had to extract absolutely everything I could and we just pulled it off.
“Overall, the weekend didn’t yield what we wanted due to a series of unfortunate events. It felt like a bit of an uphill battle despite the pace we clearly had, but I’m pleased with the job we did, because we weren’t great in free practice yet by digging deep and putting in the hard yards, we ended up with probably the best car I’ve ever had around Thruxton.
“That’s really encouraging, and I think what we’ve learnt will similarly translate elsewhere, which bodes well for the remainder of the season.
“We’ll chalk this one up as a learning experience and come back stronger at Knockhill.”