Tom Ingram paid tribute to Speedworks Motorsport after qualifying fourth for the first British Touring Car Championship race at Thruxton tomorrow after the standings leader struggled during free practice.
Ingram cemented his early season form with a 1:16.236 across the thirty-minute session, a lap time bested only by the Honda Civic Type R trio of Jack Goff, defending champion Gordon Shedden and pole-sitter Matt Neal.
He had previously told TouringCars.net prior to the session that, based on the team’s struggles during qualifying, he would have been happy to consolidate his position with a top ten starting slot.
“I’m very, very happy,” said Ingram to TouringCars.Net. “A big pat on the back to all the boys, because as a team that was one of the hardest things we’ve had to do and come back from, when genuinely we were really struggling,” admitted Ingram.
“To be able to come back from that and actually put a time in that is well in the mix is I think very, very good. We went about it in a very methodical and tactical manner, and came up with what we needed to do. As a team, it’s a huge pat on the back to the boys.
The 23-year old also admitted he felt some time had been left on the table during his fastest qualifying run, though he attributed it to personal error rather than a strict enforcement of track limits by the officials.
“We could have had more, I cocked it up, so we could have had another little bit out of it. To be fair we wouldn’t have any positions, I think I’d have gone up one or something like that, just looking at the data, but it wouldn’t have made any difference for the races tomorrow.”
The 23-year old also theorized the two works Honda machines could work together during the first race tomorrow to maximise their championship gains at one of their strongest circuits in terms of performance.
“The trouble we’ve got now is that the guys that we’re closest to don’t have any weight, but we’ve got Gordon up there and Matt is up there as well, which means Matt is going to be protecting Gordon a little bit. Gordon’s got a bit of a rear-gunner in that sense, so whether we see Gordon win it and Matt play rear guard, or whether we’re too early in the championship, I don’t know.
“We’ll just have to wait and see. We can only do what we can do, we know we’ve got a good car over a race distance.
“Let’s just get through race one first and judge it off that. That’s how we did it at Donington and it worked very well, we’ve just got to try and replicate it.”