Tom Ingram believes that he has done ‘a fairly good job’ to be second overall at the halfway stage of the British Touring Car Championship, saying that with more competitive drivers it’s ‘a much tougher championship’ than in the past.
Ingram took two podium finishes in the three BTCC races held at Croft, taking the fight to the race-winning Subaru of Ash Sutton early in the race, before ultimately having to settle for second.
The Speedworks Motorsport driver was pleased with his efforts at the weekend, which have seen him move up to second in the standings and slightly reduce his deficit to leader Colin Turkington to 19 points.
“I think that as much as we would have liked to have gone forwards, realistically it was never going to happen with the weight that we were carrying on the standard tyre,” said Ingram to TouringCars.Net.
“I think we’ve exceeded our expectations, certainly for the weekend, but in [race three] I was just mindful that we’d already had two very strong results I was mindful just to finish seventh and stay out of trouble.”
Ingram admits that the year has been tough, with more competitive drivers able to fight at the front. As such, the total points scored by the leading drivers at the halfway stage of the season is less than in previous years, with Turkington having 26 points less than the points leader did at the same stage in 2017.
“It hasn’t been perfect all year, so we’ve had a bit of an uphill battle and we’ll see how the championship unravels itself in the sense that there’s a load more people to fill the gaps now.
“Whereas before you could sit with 75 kg or 66 kg or something going into qualifying and be fairly confident you’d be in the top ten, now that’s not the case.
“So all of a sudden it’s a much, much tougher championship than I’ve ever been in; it’s tough. It’s hard work, but I think we’ve done a fairly good job.”