Speedworks Motorsport‘s Tom Ingram was quickest in both wet and dry conditions at the end of Wednesday’s official British Touring Car Championship Dunlop tyre test at Snetterton.
The Toyota Avensis driver set his best time of 1m55.932s in the morning session at the 300 circuit in Norfolk, beating the Motorbase Performance Ford Focus ST of Andrew Jordan by just under half a second.
Ingram’s time also bettered the qualifying lap record of Colin Turkington from 2015, the round one winner also topping the times in a rain-hit second session later in the afternoon.
“The car has felt really strong and we’ve just been playing around with different setups all day really. We’ve come up with a bit of a plan that we’ve been running through and we’ve just been trying to stick to it,” Ingram told btcc.net.
“On the Friday or Saturday of a race meeting you don’t get a lot of time to tinker with the car and setups, the geometry and differentials. It’s been nice to have a morning where you can come up with some ideas.”
Daniel Lloyd‘s impressive form with Eurotech Racing continued, bagging the third fastest time overall which was comfortably quicker than team-mate, Jeff Smith, who finished fourth ahead of Rob Austin‘s Toyota Avensis.
A strong showing for Ollie Jackson put the AmD Tuning.com man sixth ahead of Croft winner Ashley Sutton, Aiden Moffat‘s Mercedes A-Class and the second Triple Eight MG6 of Josh Cook. Championship leader Sam Tordoff meanwhile quietly finished 10th overall, his West Surrey Racing team-mates Rob Collard and Jack Goff ending 16th and 19th.
Gordon Shedden and Matt Neal were 18th and 19th respectively for the Halfords Yuasa Racing team, while the four Subaru Levorgs of Silverline Subaru BMR Racing finished 20th, 21st, 22nd and 29th. James Cole was best of that quartet, Turkington, Jason Plato and team boss Warren Scott filling the remaining aforementioned places.
The second test under wet conditions also saw Michael Epps shine for Team HARD, the rookie finishing second overall behind Ingram.
Teams used the test to experiment with a number of different Dunlop tyre compounds to aid their 2017 preparation, while many also took the Snetterton outing as an opportunity to tweak their machines ahead of the second half of the current campaign.
A second day of testing takes place at the Norfolk circuit tomorrow (30th June).
Snetterton Test – Wednesday AM Results:
1) Tom Ingram Speedworks Motorsport 1m55.932s
2) Andrew Jordan Pirtek Racing +0.484s
3) Daniel Lloyd Eurotech Racing +0.699s
4) Jeff Smith Eurotech Racing +1.049s
5) Rob Austin Handy Motorsport +1.161s
6) Ollie Jackson AmD Tuning.com +1.236s
7) Ashley Sutton MG Racing RCIB Insurance +1.317s
8) Aiden Moffat Laser Tools Racing +1.341s
9) Josh Cook MG Racing RCIB Insurance +1.391s
10) Sam Tordoff Team JCT600 with GardX +1.405s
Wednesday PM Results:
1) Tom Ingram Speedworks Motorsport 2m14.990s
2) Michael Epps RCIB Insurance Racing +0.733s
3) Adam Morgan WIX Racing +0.828s
4) Aron Smith BKR +0.919s
5) Gordon Shedden Halfords Yuasa Racing +1.261s
6) Aiden Moffat Laser Tools Racing +1.853s
7) Hunter Abbott Power Maxed Racing +2.220s
8) James Cole Silverline Subaru BMR Racing +2.230s
9) Andrew Jordan Pirtek Racing +2.358s
10) Dan Lloyd Eurotech Racing +2.472s