Tom Ingram remained in an upbeat mood after a difficult Oulton Park event saw him pick up a best finish of just tenth, as he lost only a small amount of ground in the British Touring Car Championship title fight.
Ingram had gone to Oulton Park – his worst circuit for his personal form – oping to fight for wins and podiums.
However, the 28-year-old would come up against misfortune and frustration, as he struggled to make an impact in Cheshire.
A turbo wastegate issue in qualifying consigned Ingram to the back of the grid for race one, a matter made even more difficult due to having to carry 66 kg of success ballast into the race thanks to being second in the championship heading into the event.
Ingram had worked his way up to the fringe of the points positions in race one before it was red-flagged due to an accident. In the second half of the race, medium-compound tyres and faded brakes meant Ingram couldn’t hold position and he took the chequered flag in just 19th.
With a ballast-free car for race two, the Excelr8 Motorsport driver bagged the fastest lap of the race on his way to tenth, frustratingly just missing out on the reversed grid for race three.
Starting tenth with soft tyres in the final race, Ingram had moved up to sixth before another first lap red flag required a race restart.
The restart saw Ingram sit in eighth, before he had to go onto the grass to avoid title rival Ash Sutton’s spinning Infiniti, subsequently requiring a pit stop to clear out the grass from his car’s radiator.
Significantly at the back of the pack now, all Ingram could deliver was another fastest lap, as he finished down in 21st in a red-flag-shortened race.
Despite his misfortune, Ingram remains second overall in the drivers’ standings, just five behind leader Sutton.
“I don’t quite know what I’ve done to upset Oulton Park, but it clearly doesn’t like me very much as things never go to plan there,” said Ingram of his weekend.
“Saturday was obviously a difficult and disappointing day for us; the Excelr8 guys worked their socks off both during and after qualifying – they’ve got the burns on their arms and legs from the heat to prove it – but it was a herculean task and there just wasn’t enough time to rectify the problem before the end of the session.
“Oulton is probably the worst circuit on the calendar at which to carry weight due to its stop-start nature, so it would have been tough to get too far up the grid in any case, but I reckon we would have been shooting for a position just outside the top ten.
“Still, we stayed level-headed and did what we needed to do on race day to claw our way up the order and haul ourselves into the mix.
“It’s so difficult to make progress with that much ballast on-board, and when you’re starting from the back like we were, you can’t think about the end of the race – your entire focus is on making up places whenever and wherever you can.
“That meant that by the time the re-start came around in race one, I had practically no brakes or tyres left, which combined with the weight made me a sitting duck in the final laps – we were simply in survival mode by that stage.
“With the weight removed, the Hyundai came alive and felt fantastic in races two and three, but it would have been so much nicer to be able to show that pace at the front of the field.
“After rising to sixth at the start of race three and with virtually no ballast, I felt like we were in a really good place but then of course the red flags came out and we had to do it all over again – and we know how that turned out…
“Once I’d set fastest lap, I backed off to look after the tyres in case there was a safety car that would have allowed us to try to regain some ground, but when it did come it was too late to make much difference and it was immediately followed by a red flag anyway, which kind of summed up our weekend.
“Remaining positive, though, whilst the other drivers have closed in on us in the standings, we are still there, we are still in second position and to achieve fastest lap on both tyre compounds was really encouraging and shows the speed we’ve got in this car.
“Yes, we might very well have been leading the championship now had things gone differently, but by the same token, at least Ash didn’t score many points either so it could definitely have been worse and at the end of the day, it’s important to put all of this into perspective.
“What happened to us pales into complete insignificance compared to the events at Brands Hatch, and above and beyond anything else, my thoughts go out to everybody affected by that tragedy and the family and friends of the marshal involved.”