Tom Ingram said that he was not disappointed to miss out on pole position by ‘half the blink of an eye’ at the penultimate Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship meeting at Silverstone.
The Speedworks Motorsport driver said that 13cm was the margin that separated himself from the top spot in the 30-minute qualifying session in Northamptonshire, Ashley Sutton stealing the honours by just 0.003s.
Starting on the front row, Ingram said there was potentially more in the tank at around a national circuit layout that requires a perfect lap in qualifying.
“Very pleased with that”, said Ingram when speaking to The Checkered Flag afterwards. “It’s a bit like the Brands Indy circuit because it’s such a short lap.
“You’ve got to be about 95% bang on. You can have a margin for getting it wrong, but anything other than that and you’re screwed [in qualifying], which makes it difficult to string a perfect lap together while dealing with traffic and getting a tow.”
After missing out by such a narrow margin, the round one winner added: “It could so easily have gone the other way. It’s half the blink of an eye and absolutely nothing in it at all.
“It’s quite interesting that we’ve gone a lot quicker, but it didn’t feel quite as good after we changed it from FP2. There’s always more to come and that’s why, as racing drivers, we have an excuse button.”
On his chances for Sunday success, the former multiple Ginetta category champion said that he expects to see a flurry of activity down the grid in the opening encounter.
He concluded: “It’ll be interesting in a race scenario to see how this all pans out. I’m sensing some drama. We’re second though, with a little bit of a gap to third and I’m happy with that.
“You can easily go from first to 10th on the first lap here. I’m going to try my best to have Ash off the start, then try to break away in an ideal world. It’s a hard place to overtake here.”
