Former champion vows ‘maximum attack’ in pursuit of second career crown
Team Bristol Street Motors driver feels his Hyundai is ‘best car on the grid’
30-year-old relishing the prospect of eighth consecutive BTCC title fight
Tom Ingram is ready to grab the second half of the 2024 British Touring Car Championship campaign by the scruff of the neck, warning his rivals that he will be leaving absolutely nothing on the table in his quest to clinch a second career crown in the UK’s premier motor racing series.
Ingram has been a title protagonist in the BTCC every year since 2017 – winning it in 2022 – and he entered the annual summer break just over four weeks ago placed second in the championship standings, a mere four points shy of the top of the table and embroiled in a no-holds-barred scrap with Ash Sutton and Jake Hill.
Behind the wheel of his EXCELR8 Motorsport-prepared Hyundai i30N, the Team Bristol Street Motors star has notched up three victories from the opening 15 races of the season – taking his overall total to 30 – and four further visits to the podium, while scorching to three pole positions out of five and more fastest laps than anybody else in the high-calibre, 21-strong field.
Indeed, Ingram’s trademark consistency – an invaluable attribute in a series as fiercely-disputed as the BTCC – has seen the 30-year-old take the chequered flag inside the top four on no less than 11 occasions, and with the action set to resume at Croft this coming weekend (27-28 July), he has his sights firmly set on another ‘pointsy’ outing.
Ingram has reached the rostrum six times to-date around the challenging North Yorkshire circuit – including a race win. He is targeting more of the same in a few days’ time, as he turns up the wick in his bid to reclaim the biggest prize in British motorsport...
Tom Ingram, Driver, Team Bristol Street Motors, said:
“I think we’re in a very good place. We had a very strong first half of the season, and it feels like I’ve got the best people around me and the best car on the grid – the Hyundai is in a superb window at the moment and everywhere we go, it feels good. From a driving perspective, that’s all I can ask for – it’s doing what I want it to do every single time. I never really had the car to properly take it to Ash [Sutton] last year, but we put the hard work in over the winter and now we’re reaping the rewards.
“The title battle is increasingly taking shape, it seems, and the level at the top is insanely competitive. A few years ago, I remember, if you averaged seventh position in every race, it would be enough to win the championship – but now that needs to be something like third or fourth.
“It’s much tougher in that respect, and makes it important to minimise the number of bad races you have. Thankfully, we’ve only really had two so far this season, one of which was a 50/50 tyre gamble that didn’t go our way while the other was a puncture, which was something beyond our control.
“You’re never going to have a completely perfect weekend – it’s invariably swings-and-roundabouts in the BTCC – but it’s so close that every single point will matter, including those for pole position and fastest lap, so the key will be to stay consistently up there and score well each weekend. There are a lot of factors that come into play and the pressure is beginning to ramp up, but that is a situation I’ve always enjoyed.
“I think we’ll be super-strong at Croft. It’s a circuit I like, which is obviously a good start, but given the amount of hybrid he now has, realistically, Ash should be on pole – qualifying and race one there are his to lose, really. We just need to concentrate on ourselves and ensure we’re somewhere in or around the top five initially and then focus on fighting back in races two and three.
“The bottom line is that we’re going to be on maximum attack from here to Brands Hatch in October to make sure we get that title back – I genuinely believe it’s ours to grab.”
Images: Jakob Ebrey Photography
