Tom Ingram delighted in scoring a dominant pole position in qualifying for the British Touring Car Championship at Oulton Park, smashing his own lap record in the process.
The Team Vertu driver was never far from the pace in Q1 and Q2, but Ingram became the only driver to lap in the 1 minute 23 seconds in the ‘Quick Six’ session, beating Restart Racing’s Chris Smiley to pole position by almost half a second.
Ingram has claimed three of the four Oulton Park pole positions in the past four years, and his lap time was more than three tenths of a faster quicker than he went in 2023, which was in itself a qualifying lap record for the current specification of car.
“It was great; the car felt really super hooked up and I just couldn’t ask for any more out of it,” said Ingram to TouringCars.Net. “It just did everything I wanted and a little bit more. It was absolutely superb, I’m really pleased with it.
“As a race car it felt utterly outrageous that I could kind of do what I wanted, where I wanted, how I wanted and any iteration of what I wanted.”
Ingram insists he isn’t thinking about what his title rival Ash Sutton might do on race day, preferring to focus on his own race instead.
“We’ll just see what goes on. You can’t really predict what’s going on on race day. We’ll focus on ourselves and make sure that we can control what we can control and do the best job we can.”
“I’m not looking at [the championship standings] at all at this stage. I ultimately don’t really care what the positions are, it’s more about the points gap and making sure we maximise our points score.
“I’m not overly fussed – it will be what it will be. I’ll just keep my head down and do the best job I can.”
Ingram also added that he remains unsure on how the hard tyre will fare on Sunday.
“Ultimately there’s two schools of thought – one being that everyone will try to divebomb [the drivers on the hard tyre], the other being that it’s harder to pass and it doesn’t give the opportunity to [divebomb].
“Ultimately, we’ll just have to suck it and see exactly how race day pans out. There’s every possibility with rain coming and going that we might not have to run the hard tyre at any point. But we’ll see what goes on.”