Tom Ingram ‘in a really nice window’ after Oulton Park

Team Vertu’s Tom Ingram left Oulton Park’s British Touring Car Championship full of enthusiasm, after claiming a pole position, victory and a brace of fourths in Cheshire.

The 2022 champion has lost just one point to Ash Sutton in the drivers’ standings as a result of his weekend performances, with Sutton having played a more tactical game to beat Ingram in the final race of the day.

Having smashed the qualifying lap record on Saturday, Ingram was the form driver heading into Sunday’s races. The 31-year-old delivered a masterclass performance in the opening race, claiming a lights-to-flag victory by over five seconds and scooping every bonus point going.

That win briefly gave Ingram the championship lead, but forced to run the hard tyre for race two – whilst Sutton had tactically dropped back to fourth to avoid that requirement – it was a case of damage limitation in the mid-afternoon.

Ingram held on to claim fourth ahead of reigning champion Jake Hill, and went into race three starting sixth on the reverse grid after the top nine were inverted.

Rain ahead of the final race vindicated Sutton’s decision to drop back in race one, and left Ingram – who would otherwise have benefitted from a tyre advantage over his rival – running on wet rubber like the rest of the field.

Ingram ran a setup more suited to drier, or less wet conditions, which in the early stages of the race saw him fall as low as 12^th.

However, he recovered in the second half of the race on a drying track to take fourth, although he was still button Sutton, who took second, leaving Ingram ten points adrift of his rival at the halfway stage of the season.

“Oulton Park is a circuit I love, and I felt in a really good place going into the weekend,” said Ingram. “The Hyundai was absolutely amazing in qualifying, and I was over-the-moon to take pole – it was simply the most hooked-up car I’ve ever driven, around a circuit where it really isn’t easy to link the whole lap together.

“The corner speed and momentum we were able to carry, its braking performance and the grip we could generate were something else and when we put new soft tyres on, it was just outrageous.

“Race one was similarly fantastic. You always want a bit of a buffer, and I knew once we had that and had settled into a rhythm, we were in the pound seats because then you can just control the gap as you see fit.

“My engineer Spencer told me over the radio that Dan [Cammish] had taken fastest lap, so I used some boost to take it back and there didn’t seem to be much drop-off in tyre performance over the duration either.

“I knew Ash was going to come through on the softs in race two – that was inevitable. My aim on the hard tyres was to try to stay somewhere inside the top ten, and fourth far exceeded my expectations – although Jake didn’t make my life easy and I was conscious I couldn’t afford to make so much as a single mistake or he would have been past.

“Race three was then very much a story of two halves, and it was a shame the weather played its part.

“We went very intermediate on the set-up, but it turned out that wasn’t the way to go. The track didn’t dry as quickly as we’d been anticipating, which left us vulnerable early on; when it did begin drying, we came back through, but we narrowly ran out of laps to challenge for another podium.

“That was a bit frustrating, but ultimately, the biggest takeaway from the weekend is that this car is honestly unreal – such a joy to drive – and that is full credit to Team VERTU for doing such a cracking job.

“We’re in a really nice window with the Hyundai at the moment, which is a lovely place to be.

“Now, we will use the summer break wisely to continue honing and refining it, to ensure we come out all guns blazing and ready to fight tooth-and-nail for the title over the season’s second half!”