Tom Ingram pleased to ‘get through qualifying with minimal drama’

British Touring Car Championship points leader Tom Ingram was relieved to get through a rain-affected qualifying session at Donington Park ‘with minimal drama’ after putting his Hyundai on the front row of the grid.

Ingram was just over three tenths of a second slower than Team Vertu team-mate Tom Chilton on Saturday, giving him a significant advantage over title rival Ash Sutton, who only qualified in tenth.

2022 champion Ingram explained to TouringCars.Net that it had been a ‘chaotic’ session, after on-and-off rain showers played havoc with drivers’ setups and tyre choices in the hour-long, three-part qualifying session.

“There was a lot that could have gone wrong,” Ingram told TouringCars.Net. “It certainly went right for us. We could have ended up in no-mans land there, so I’m quite pleased to have got through it with minimal drama.

“Everything felt fairly chaotic. Even in Q1, although it looked fairly plain sailing being on the soft tyre, it wasn’t, because there was still a debate before you go out about how much of this rain was going to come down.

“You can only set up a car for the current conditions; you don’t really know what it’s going to do in the future unless you’ve got a crystal ball.

“You can only be guided by what you can see, and what we could see was no rain. You’ve got to get through that, and it was risky to go with it because the radar was showing rain coming in.

“The whole thing was fairly dramatic, and it could have ended up being a big mess up, as a lot of it was ‘psychological rain’.”

To highlight how the lap times early on in qualifying were relatively unaffected by the early rain, Ingram posted a time of 1:32.939 in Q1 which would have been quicker than the qualifying lap record around the Donington Park Grand Prix circuit, had he not had it deleted for exceeding track limits.

“We actually went quicker than we had ever done, with a 1:32.9, but we got track limits because we were half a millimetre over at the chicane.

“But we got through [Q1] and did everything we needed to do. [Pole] was good for Tom [Chilton], good for me and it great for the team. It doesn’t really get much better than a 1-2. We’re in a good place for tomorrow and will focus on ourselves and what we need to do.”

Ingram insisted he didn’t care where his main title rival Ash Sutton was in qualifying, preferring to focus on his own situation.

“Honestly, I’m not fussed. I don’t know where Ash is – I know he’s not in the top six, but honestly, I’ve not looked.

“All I know is Tom’s on pole and I’m second – I’ve not looked and I don’t care. I just want to focus on us and do the best job we can.”