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Tom Ingram delighted by breakthrough pole

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Tom Ingram was left delighted by his maiden Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship pole position after topping the times in qualifying for the 2016 season opener at Brands Hatch.

The Speedworks driver was on the pace throughout free practice around the short Indy circuit, topping the times in FP1 for the second successive season before going third quickest in FP2.

Going into qualifying, the former Ginetta champion was hopeful of qualifying towards the front of the pack but was able to nail down his quick lap at the ideal moment to break the qualifying lap record just before light rain started to fall.

Despite the best efforts of some of his rivals as conditions improved slightly towards the end, Ingram was rewarded with a first pole for both himself and the Speedworks team, whilst it was also the first time a Toyota has topped qualifying since Frank Wrathall at Snetterton back in 2012.

“It was always the plan to try and qualify towards the front, but when I was sat in the car at the start of the session and could see the dark clouds rolling in, I knew we had to go for it early on,” Ingram admitted. “I managed to hook up the lap and when I looked down and say a 47.9, I thought it was alright – then got the call to say it was P1. When spots of rain appeared on the windscreen, it was perfect timing!

“Regardless of the conditions I feel we had good pace in the car and I’m chuffed that we’ve stuck it on pole. Having finished 2015 strongly, we wanted to start 2016 strongly and that’s exactly what we’ve done today. The race pace should be strong, and I’m hopeful of maximising our pace tomorrow.”

Reflecting on the reasons behind his strong performance, Ingram insisted that it was largely down to the hard work put in by Speedworks during the winter in accommodating the latest NGTC-spec parts supplied by RML.

“Geoff [Kingston] has done a lot of work during the winter to look at how to accommodate the new parts and to see what we could do to improve the car and this is the end result,” he said. “There is also the added benefit of the fact we have been able to carry out a proper pre-season testing programme and now we have to wait and see what race day brings.”