Following a fine fifth place qualifying result for the third British Touring Car Championship meeting of 2014 at Thruxton on Saturday, Tom Ingram says that he has set his sights at maintaining a top-five position in Sunday’s trio of races.
The 20-year-old continued to shine in the early life of his rookie campaign, planting the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Avensis on the third row of the grid for today’s opening race at the Hampshire circuit.
Ingram told The Checkered Flag afterwards of his delight to have threatened the front-runners again in qualifying, especially at a circuit he had not expected to show such pace.
“A really good result”, Ingram told TCF on his Saturday efforts. “I don’t think we expected to qualify as high as we did so it was a great result.
“We never expected it, and to do it round here as well – this was the place which I thought that we would really struggle at.
“It’s scary enough as it is, let alone when you haven’t had as much experience in the car. You’ve just got to keep it pinned. I had a massive spin through Goodwood [on Saturday] which was at about 130mph going through Goodwood!
The reigning Ginetta GT Supercup champion – who won when the series visited the Hampshire circuit last season in his title-winning year- kept his cards close to his chest for Sunday’s action however, but set his hopes on maintaining his top 10 position.
“We’ve got a good car”, he added. “There’s still some improvements we can make, but racing is a different matter altogether so it’ll just be about keeping it clean for the whole race distance.
“I’m pumped for it, and if we can just hold position then I’ll be over the moon. Holding position is going to be difficult, but if I can just keep it in the 10 then it will be good.
“Fifth is a great position to hold, but obviously I’d love to think that we can go forward a few places because it is very, very realistic now.”
