Tom Ingram hailed a “superb” podium finish in the penultimate Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship round of the season at Brands Hatch GP circuit, saying he felt he could have even stolen the victory from Mat Jackson without a safety car interruption.
The Speedworks Motorsport driver moved up into third place on the opening lap of the second race of the day in Kent, climbing another spot to second from Adam Morgan later in the race at Stirlings.
Ingram remained right on the tail of Jackson’s Motorbase Ford Focus ST in the remaining laps, although the Toyota Avensis driver was delighted to have finished second to back up his Rockingham podium visit.
“Superb. We kind of hoped that we’d have an advantage on the harder tyre in that race with people around us mostly on the softs”, Ingram told The Checkered Flag after his podium visit.
“The pressure was on to deliver, but we knew we were still in a pretty decent place. The race panned out really well for us as we managed to move up to third at the start and it just came to us.
“I was trying not to take too much out of it so that the others would keep coming back towards us during the race. The safety car probably didn’t help us – had we not had that, then it could have been an entirely different race altogether.
“I think we could have nicked a win out of it. We didn’t, but it’s still great to pick up second spot and it’s a great testament to the boys for the work over the past five months.”
Ingram has claimed 17 top-10 results in 2015 so far with the Toyota Avensis, moving up to 13th in the Drivers’ Championship alongside his brace of podium finishes.
The results have been massively encouraging according to the youngster himself, Ingram hopeful of securing his seat with the squad for the new season.
He added: “It’s been huge. I said at the start of the year that I want this car to be in the top 10, consistently in the top five and fighting for podiums. We’ve got at least two of those, so it’s super.
“We’ve got some awesome sponsors on board, so we’ll sit down with them and see what their plans are, then come back with it hopefully. We can get this car up to a really decent package, so we’ll see how it pans out in the winter.”
