Tom Ingram was pleased with his qualifying efforts in the British Touring Car Championship at Snetterton, which will see the Hyundai driver start from the front row after a penalty for a rival.
Excelr8 Motorsport’s Ingram had originally qualified in third for the opening race on Sunday, but he has been promoted to the front row of the grid alongside Colin Turkington after Gordon Shedden was excluded from the result.
The 27-year-old was three tenths slower than Turkington, but had been suffering from hay fever during the two-part qualifying session.
“I’m really pleased with that,” said Ingram, who won at Snetterton in 2019. “I feel ‘medium-rare’ at the moment after a hot and sweaty qualifying session, which is quite entertaining.
“It’s a really, really good result. I’m slightly disappointed by it, because obviously I wanted to be on pole, but it’s a top job by these boys, they’ve done a cracking effort. I think we’re in a good place.”
Ingram expects that he could have extracted more from his Hyundai i30 N Fastback, but accepted that the same was likely to be true of his competitors’ laps too.
“I think we’ve got a bit more to extract. I made a bit of a mistake going into the first hairpin which probably cost me a little bit of time. So is it perfect? No, not by any means, but these lads will have had more as well, so I think we can be pleased with it.”
With Sunday set to be even hotter than Saturday, Ingram is anticipating tough conditions inside his car on race day.
“As long as we’re ‘fluid-ed’ up we’ll be alright. The biggest thing with these is the ambient temperature we get inside the car – it’s about 20 degrees above what the temperature is outside, so you are sat in an oven basically.
“We need plenty of fluids, tablets and powders and all sorts of concoctions that are supposed to keep us going. It will be difficult tomorrow, but we’re all supreme athletes, so we’ll be fine!”