Tom Ingram will remain at Speedworks Motorsport for the 2016 British Touring Car Championship season, as the rookie enters his third season in the BTCC looking for a maiden win.
Ingram will return to the wheel of the Toyota Avensis which he has piloted since joining the BTCC, with the 22-year-old looking to add to the 23 points finishes and two podiums which he secured in his second season.
Despite a number of approaches from rival teams, Ingram has opted to remain with Cheshire-based Speedworks Motorsport, aided by the opportunity to carry out a pre-season testing programme for the first time, something which was not previously possible due to a lack of budget.
“The second half of last year was hugely positive for us, and it was encouraging to see all our development paying off,” explained Ingram, part of the BRDC Superstars initiative. “Our performance got better and better, which shone through in the results with two podiums from the last three race weekends. From our point of view, the season ended too soon because we were on a roll!
“That has left us with a lot of unfinished business, which is massively exciting. I really feel at home at Speedworks – part of the family – and personally-speaking, I’m now a much stronger driver, from my knowledge and understanding of the car to my relationship with the team’s engineers.
“I would like to think I’ve got a long career ahead of me in the BTCC, and these are very much my formative years – I’m still vastly inexperienced in touring car terms, and I need experienced people like Christian Dick and our chief engineer Geoff Kingston around me to learn from. The benefit of that continuity really can’t be underestimated, especially with a lot of drivers switching teams and cars and having to get used to a whole new environment.
“Speedworks’ work ethic is second-to-none; everybody is ultra-professional, but at the same time they know how to have fun, which is important – this is hardly a cheap sport, so you need to make sure you’re enjoying it or else you might as well not bother. We’re such a tight-knit unit, and although I did have discussions with other teams, having come so far together, this was no time to walk away. I’m in absolutely the right place for 2016.
“We only really scratched the surface in 2015 of what we can achieve with this car – although the first half obviously wasn’t what we had been hoping for, we dug deep and turned it around in style. There is a lot more to come from the Avensis yet, and I genuinely believe we can be a force to be reckoned with this year.
“We’ve got to remain realistic, of course, because the BTCC is never easy and with more manufacturers coming in, the calibre of competition looks set to be stiffer than ever. Simply being able to finish consistently inside the top ten will be no mean feat, but we want to be knocking on the door of the Independents’ title and we have to be targeting our first win at the very least.”
Speedworks’ Team Principal Christian Dick is hoping that continuing the partnership with the three-time Ginetta champion will help his team finally make the step up to being BTCC race winners.
“Jason Plato described Tom as world-class after their battle at Rockingham last year, and I would not disagree – the kid is a champion in-waiting in my eyes,” added Dick. “He has grown tremendously as a driver since joining the BTCC two years ago, and his form at the end of 2015 was superb.
“His raw speed has never been in doubt, and his racecraft is now also amongst the best in the business – as Rockingham proved, he’s not afraid of getting stuck in and going wheel-to-wheel with anybody else on the grid. Reputations don’t faze him at all.
“Keeping him on-board this year was therefore extremely high on our ‘to-do’ list, and although we received interest from a number of other drivers, Tom was always our number one choice and we are delighted to have retained his services. He’s ready to take the next step and we’re ready to take the next step, so from our point of view, the start of the season really can’t come soon enough!
“With Geoff Kingston at the helm on the engineering side, we took a sizeable step forward in 2015, and there is still plenty of untapped potential in the Avensis. We resolved the tyre degradation issues over a race distance that had hampered us so much the previous year, to the extent where the car is now stronger on Sundays than Saturdays.
“As soon as we left Brands Hatch in October, attentions turned towards this year and all the boys have put in a colossal effort over the winter to ensure we go into 2016 in the best shape we can possibly be. I’m so proud of every single one of them. There is such a close bond inside this team and everybody pulls together – we go about our business with minimal fuss, keep our heads down and work hard and that is reflected in the results.”