Tom Ingram led a JHR Developments one-two-three in the penultimate qualifying session of the 2013 Michelin Ginetta GT Supercup season, his fifth pole position in six weekends putting him in prime position to wrap up the championship in this afternoon’s opening race.
The twenty minute Supercup session proved to be an incredibly tight affair, with six cars separated by less than a tenth of a second at the halfway stage.
Ingram was quickly edging his way up the leaderboard however and stormed to the top with a time of 58.506s, before sitting in the pits for the final five minutes and watching on as none of his rivals could beat him, conveniently saving his tyres for the opening race in the process.
With his chief title rival Carl Breeze languishing down in tenth place, Ingram looks destined to wrap up the title this afternoon, with just a top six finish in the race required to complete his unique Ginetta championship hat-trick.
Ingram won’t get an easy run in the race however, and hot on his heels are Pepe Massot , Rob Boston and Jamie Orton, the top four separated by a mere 0.095s in the times.
Matt Nicoll-Jones continued his strong recent run of form with the fifth fastest time, while following up his impressive Rockingham debut with a top six start was Century Motorsport’s Tom Oliphant.
Andrew Watson and Alex MacDowall were two of the drivers to briefly top the timesheets early in the session, the latter making a guest appearance in the championship this weekend, before slipping back to seventh and eighth respectively.
Carl Boardley will share row five with his namesake Breeze, with Sean Huyton and Mark Davies eleventh and twelfth respectively.
Louise Richardson took the G50 class pole position on her return to the championship, the Richardson Racing racer overcoming power steering issues to set a best time of 1m 00.027s, leading the Norwegian duo of Andre Falkenhaug and Steffen Feet.
Suffering problems during meanwhile was Fergus Walkinshaw, with a suspected engine problem curtailing his session early on, leaving him 22nd and last on the grid.
Full qualifying results can be found here: http://tsl-timing.com/toca/2013/133903g50.pdf
