Tom Ingram is looking to minimize the damage from carrying success ballast after qualifying an impressive fourth for the opening British Touring Car Championship race at Donington Park.
Ingram, a race-winner at Brands Hatch during the season curtain-raiser, improved his time to a 1:09.710 in the second half of a disrupted session to book his place on the second row alongside Jack Goff.
Ashley Sutton claimed pole position, his first for Team BMR’s works Subaru outfit.
Ingram admitted to TouringCars.net the result was a relief when factoring in the sixty-six kilograms of success ballast he carries on board the Toyota Avensis courtesy of his second position in the championship heading into the weekend.
“We came into the weekend with aspirations of being top ten, we knew realistically pace-wise we might be able to sneak a top eight at most, so to pull fourth out of the bag – I didn’t expect that at all” said Ingram “It’s not really a big gap to the guys ahead.”
Clear track proved to be at a premium around the 1.9 National circuit across the half-hour session, but Ingram explained difficulty in finding an optimal setup initially hampered his progress.
“It was just trying to hook a lap up together,” he admitted.
“We’d been struggling through practice to try and find a nice balance, there was a lot of work over those two sessions to try and get to a car that felt like it was nearly there.
“We had a chance to have a proper think before we went out, made a couple of changes. It felt better, but still not great. Carrying 66 kilos is never going to feel fantastic.”
Looking ahead to the opening race tomorrow, the BRDC Rising Star insisted his goal was to simply keep touch with the top of the standings.
“Minimize the points loss, just try and finish it, lose the weight then go for race two.” he summarized.
With wet weather likely to hit Donington Park over the course of race day, the 23-year old says he is unfazed by being one of the first drivers likely to hit the conditions in race trim.
“It’s part of the fun of driving in the wet. I really enjoy driving in the wet, so hopefully if it is, it’ll come early enough that we can have a proper wet setup and have some fun!”