Tom Ingram was delighted to score his second British Touring Car Championship pole position of the season at Thruxton, but says that now he must take advantage of that to secure a top score on Sunday.
The EXCELR8 Motorsport driver secured the eighth pole of his career, and beat NAPA Racing UK’s Dan Cammish, who had six seconds more hybrid per lap than Ingram, by just over a quarter of a second.
Having been second and first in the preceding practice sessions prior to qualifying, Ingram admitted that he had gone into the all-important session with confidence at a high.
“We just tried to do something a little different this weekend to see if it paid off,” explained Ingram.
“The difficulty here is that we only know the hard tyre – we don’t have to use any other tyre. Goodyear do a fantastic job of making a great tyre, however this one is rubbish; it just feels low grip, it’s the worst tyre we all want to be one and it just doesn’t give us anything.
“I’m really pleased though, the car has felt fantastic today. We’ve worked hard at it all week. I felt confident coming into the race this weekend and it’s felt alive right from the get-go.
“We’ve made such minute little tweaks to this car and we’re getting results back from it. When we want it to do something we can do the slightest of tweaks and get the response.
“The team has done a fantastic job. Even better to celebrate 100 years of Bristol Street Motors and also my 100th race with EXCELR8. It’s a great way to start, but we’ve got to make sure that we can do the hard work tomorrow and really maximise the points score.”
Ingram has only twice before won at Thruxton – both in 2020 – but he twice finished second in last year’s races and says he enjoys racing on the high-speed Hampshire circuit.
“This place is tough – we are all so on the edge. We saw in Q1 suddenly the track temperature rose and the circuit felt totally different. It’s a really unique challenge for us to unlock this place.
“It’s a circuit I’ve always enjoyed, but we need everything to align. As I’ve said before, this is the circuit where you need all three – you need the car to be working, a bit of luck on your side, and as a driver you need to be confident in the car you’ve got, and today we absolutely had that.
“I honestly cannot say enough good things about the car and how it felt. Now we’ve got to maximise tomorrow when it really matters.”