BTCC champion Ingram confident that greasy track bugbear is solved

British Touring Car Championship star Tom Ingram is confident that Excelr8 Motorsport has cracked the code on solving its Hyundai’s lack of pace on a damp track.

Ingram famously fell short of claiming his second BTCC crown in the 2024 season finale at Brands Hatch, when drizzle through the afternoon left the i30 N Fastback short of grip.

That left him vulnerable to an attack from Jake Hill, who sailed past in his BMW to claim his maiden title.

The conditions were similar to those experienced at Snetterton earlier in the season during qualifying, when Ingram was a lowly 13th.

The Hyundai is renowned as a standard-setter in the BTCC on a dry track and also on a full-wet surface, and Ingram was confident in the wake of the Brands finale that a three-day post-season test at Anglesey would provide the right conditions to get to the bottom of its bugbear on a merely greasy track.

But that test featured no rain at all, and likewise Excelr8’s five days of pre-season testing in 2025 at Brands Hatch, Snetterton, Croft and Donington Park all took place in completely dry conditions.

The first two race weekends were dry too, before last weekend’s third round at Snetterton featured a slippery track for the opening free practice session.

Ingram confirmed that the track surface was sufficiently greasy – rather than full-wet – to trial set-up improvements which came during the winter by engineer Spencer Aldridge.

“Yes,” Ingram told Autosport. “We started with a base, changed to our change for the season, and found a big improvement.

“So yes, I think it’s confirmed what we suspected, which is good, which means now it’s a case of implementing the changes that we need to make.

“It was actually really useful to get that FP1 running in. Naturally we haven’t gone yes, because there wasn’t another session to confirm it [FP2 and the rest of the weekend were dry], but I’m fairly confident that we’ve got it sorted.”

Ingram, who needed to fit another set of wet-weather rubber at Brands after his lap to the grid, played down the suggestion that the problem is due to the Hyundai taking too much out of its tyres.

“It was a factor of a few bits and pieces all linked together I think,” he added. “It’s a lot of things all compounded that stack up to be one big issue.

“Tyres – that’s part of it naturally, but a lot of it was just general pace wasn’t there at all. It just felt a little bit rubbish.

“I think we’ve made improvements to it but until we get a few consistent shots at it we won’t really know.”