Tom Ingram vows to ‘knuckle down’ after Knockhill disappointment

Tom Ingram has vowed to keep fighting in his quest to defend the BTCC title despite losing ground to main rival Ash Sutton at the top of the points.

Ingram went into the Knockhill weekend sitting six points down on Sutton, with the Bristol Street Motors with EXCELR8 driver losing further ground when Sutton put his Ford Focus on pole for the opening race.

However, things seemed to be going the way of the defending champion in race one when heavy rain mixed up the order, with Ingram emerging at the head of the field to secure a win that was set to give him the championship lead.

Instead, his Hyundai would fail the ride height test and Ingram was excluded from the result, and also dropped to the back of the grid for race two.

Whilst he would fight his way through to the top ten in race two and score a podium in race three, Ingram now finds himself nearly 40 points behind Sutton, who would add to his win tally with victory in race three.

“Losing the win in race one was really hard to take, particularly when we were going to move into the championship lead,” he said. “The rules are the rules and there was no blame attached, but we haemorrhaged a lot of points, so our focus then shifted to race three and recovering whatever we could.

“The car came alive on the soft tyre in race two and we were able to come through to the top ten, and then the third race was just crazy. We started in a monsoon and by the end, there was almost a dry line – it was mental how quickly things changed.

“I think we did a good job to claw back some points over the course of the day, and on another encouraging note, we seem to have found some more pace from the car too, so now we need to keep that development going into the final three weekends.”

Ingram also took time to credit team-mate Ronan Pearson for playing a supporting role in the final race by allowing him through to secure his podium result.

“I hated taking the podium away from Ronan at his home track – I felt like I’d kicked a puppy,” he said. “He did an amazing job over the weekend and will definitely be achieving podiums and victories in the future, but at this stage of the season and with the championship situation as it currently is, we need to make sure we score as highly as possible.”