Tom Ingram says the British Touring Car Championship title fight is starting to take a new direction, with a small breakaway group of contenders at the top of the points table.
Ingram conceded the lead to Team BMW’s Colin Turkington after a mixed weekend at Rockingham; the highlight being another storming drive through from 27th to finish the middle contest on the podium in 3rd.
As a result, he will make the annual trip north of the Scottish border to Knockhill a mere 4 points adrift in the Speedworks Motorsport-run Toyota Avensis.
“I think the championship is starting to take a bit of a turn in direction now,” Ingram told TouringCars.net at Rockingham.
“I think Sutton will come back at Knockhill but hopefully we’re starting to see a bit of a breakaway now; the least amount of people in that, the better.”
He also pointed to the importance of being competitive at Knockhill, believing Turkington and Ash Sutton stand a realistic chance of winning all three races between them.
“We know it’s going to be damage limitation when we go to Knockhill, because those guys are going to be really strong around there – we’ve got to try and lose the least amount of points possible.
“I’d argue that between Colin and Ash, they could win all three races. It’s going to be quite a tough weekend for us, because the pressure is going to be on to make sure we’re really up the front, because we know those guys are going to be there.”
Reflecting on his weekend in Northamptonshire as a whole, Ingram was satisfied with a damage limitation exercise, but says there is work to be done on the car’s qualifying performance.
“We could almost use the same quotes as we did after Snetterton!” joked Ingram.
“We could have really struggled this weekend after the first race, we could have come away from here without a single point scored and really dented our championship hopes.
“I think it really was a case of damage limitation this weekend. Obviously the second race was bloody brilliant, the third race was just about points scoring, I was heavy on weight, so I was mindful to just score points in that one and stay as close to Colin as I could to minimize that.
“So, all in all, I actually think it’s been a good weekend. We’ve shown we have good pace – and better race pace than qualifying pace – which we need to sort.”
In the final race the reigning Independents Champion took fifth, electing to save his tyres whilst Turkington and Sam Tordoff’s Ford Focus battled ahead in the hope his ballast-laden Toyota might be able to mount a late charge.
“That’s why I held right back, because I saw those guys were battling,” explained Ingram.
“I had a gap behind, a gap in front, I was just saving the tyres. I decided to just take a handful of laps of tyre management, to see if I could have a pop at them towards the end.
“It didn’t quite come back enough or as much as I would have wanted, but I can’t be too disappointed with fifth.”
The series resumes in the Fife countryside over the weekend of 25-26 August.