How a manic Donington Park weekend put Ingram on the verge of another BTCC title

It’s flashback time…and let’s go back to the 1984 European Formula 2 Championship. 

This was the last season of the series before it was axed and replaced by Formula 3000. The Ralt team dominated, and the common consensus was that the Honda V6 engines that exclusively powered the Ralts were too damn fast for the predominantly BMW-equipped opposition. Change was needed. The late Ralt boss and designer Ron Tauranac always disagreed; he claimed that his mastering of ground-effect not only raised speed through the corners, but that, logically, the compound benefit was pace onto the straights. 

We’re now 41 years on from those days. Many in the British Touring Car Championship are grumbling about the straight-line speed of the Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastbacks, one of which has carried Tom Ingram 32 points clear of Ash Sutton with two rounds remaining, thanks to another excellent weekend at Donington Park that included Ingram’s fifth win of the season. 

“I reckon the championship will be done at Silverstone,” muttered reigning – and almost certainly outgoing – champion Jake Hill as the dust settled in the Donington paddock. His point being, such are Ingram’s and the Hyundai’s superiority, that the traditional season-climax bust-up at the Brands GP track will revolve solely around manufacturers, teams, Independents and Jack Sears points. 

But let’s go trackside during free practice to the Donington Grand Prix layout’s Esses, and witness the unbelievable entry speed Ingram is carrying in. It’s hard to compute that this is a heavy NGTC car on used carryover medium tyres. It’s quick, precise and mindblowingly quick, Ingram pinpoint-precise. Yes, it’s good on the straights, but that’s helped by being quicker onto them… 

And let’s look at speedtrap times from qualifying. One of them, handily, is on the Craner Curves, where driver skill and chassis balance count for so much. So take a bow, rookie Charles Rainford, whose West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sport is the only car to eclipse Ingram during the dry Q1 sessions when it’s clocked at 136.3mph. In the wet Q3 pole shootout, Ingram’s 121.5mph is 1.1 clear of Rainford’s team-mate Daryl DeLeon, and a huge 4.4 quicker than pole-winning Hyundai stablemate Tom Chilton.

There’s no question that Chilton has been on it this season, far and away the effervescent Surrey veteran’s best since 2018. He was quickest in free practice at Donington, and then put it all together when it counted on a wet track. This, Ingram surmised, potentially exaggerated the advantage of Chilton’s allowance of 13 seconds per lap of TOCA Turbo Boost to the one of the series leader: “Your corner speeds are lower and you’re trying to get back up to racing speed. That said, he’s done a fantastic job.” 

And further hampering Ingram’s bid to convert his front-row starting position into pole position was our next flashback time… let’s go back to the 1974 British Grand Prix. 

Here, long-time leader Niki Lauda pitted close to the end of the race to replace a shredded tyre on his Ferrari. But he could not rejoin to claim a rightful fifth place because the Brands Hatch pitlane exit was blocked by assorted dignitaries and hangers-on. 

“Coming through Coppice, I suggested on the radio, ‘Tell Tom last corner this lap, I’ll let him through and then a couple of laps, give the place back’. And then I had a couple of laps of TOCA Turbo Boost at the end to just pull out a bit” Tom Chilton

“We came in with three and a half minutes to go to do another set of fronts,” related Ingram. “And yeah… the pitlane was closed, so I wasn’t able to get back out unfortunately. They put me in parc ferme. I think they had a slight mix-up…” 

And so Chilton nicked a useful point from Ingram’s championship quest there, and also inadvertently did the same in race one when he grabbed fastest lap: “Oops, I was supposed to give that to Tom.” 

But Chilton did play the team game on his way to 2025 season victory number two by allowing Ingram past for a short spell in front to gain a lap-leader point. “Coming through Coppice, I suggested on the radio, ‘Tell Tom last corner this lap, I’ll let him through,’” recounted Chilton. “‘And then a couple of laps, give the place back.’ And then I had a couple of laps of TOCA Turbo Boost at the end to just pull out a bit.”

Chilton won race one at Donington Park

Photo by: JEP

The reason for that last point was the looming presence of third-placed Dan Rowbottom, who for his part was attempting to play an Alliance Racing game of team strategy to boost the title prospects of Ash Sutton. When the Midlander’s NAPA-liveried Ford Focus ST got closer, Chilton “was worried if I was too close to [the front of] Tom he could overheat his brakes, which is a big thing around here.” 

Rowbottom, Sutton, their Alliance cohort Dan Cammish and Hill had all fallen foul of Q2, albeit for differing reasons. It had begun to rain, and Sutton was the only one of the 12 to venture out on wet-weather Goodyears. He was on a hot lap that would, it transpired, have given him safe passage to Q3 when he pitted for slicks, just at the point when Rowbottom did the exact opposite. 

“We broke our golden rule of ‘always do a lap’,” sighed Sutton. “Tony [Carrozza, Sutton’s engineer] has some information, I’ve got some information, and we can’t quite see each other’s. He’s seeing people going quicker than me in sector two; I can see how wet sector three is. So he made the call to come in to put slicks on to do a run. When we did that it started to come down with rain.” 

Sutton therefore lined up 10th, and fourth was as far as he wanted to go in the opening race on the medium tyres, because the top three would have to fit the hard rubber for the sequel. “Once we got there, we were happy with that place,” he pointed out. 

The four-time champion’s Focus, liveried for this weekend, like Cammish’s, in retro Valvoline style, therefore looked a shoo-in for race two. But then came a gaffe from Rowbottom, who other than one misjudgement had a superb day on Sunday. Following an early safety car, the hard-tyred Chilton was crestfallen that the new-for-2025 restart regulations had stitched him up.

“They’re going to need to change the rules and regulations,” he said, “because not going flat-out until you get to the ‘go’ board, as soon as everyone behind me accelerated beforehand, the whole group got a run on me and it wasn’t fair. Apparently, it’s only first place who has to go on the ‘go’ board. I’m a bit upset with it to be honest.”

Sutton’s chances of a record-breaking fifth title are now very slim

Photo by: JEP

Ingram slipped down the inside to lead into Redgate, but Rowbottom, on the hard tyres as sprinkles of rain fell, nerfed Sutton into Chilton and all were delayed. “I did everything I could,” rued ‘Rowbo’. “I braked earlier than Ash – you can watch it on the onboard. We were on the brakes probably 15 metres earlier. I tried to avoid him and turn left, but it was what it was, which wasn’t good for me or for him.” “We all do ’em,” shrugged Sutton. “It was just one of those little errors. He braked a little bit late, locked up and unfortunately ran into the back of us. It’s easier to do that on the hard tyre – we’re all on the absolute limit, and unfortunately, it was me in front on the receiving end of it.” 

That allowed Cammish into second and, on the medium tyres, he would surely pass the hard-shod Ingram. Both the Berkshire-domiciled Yorkshireman and Hill had set times in Q2 good enough to progress to the Quick Six – either would have been third in session – but the dreaded track limits scuppered that. “I’m just sick to death of it,” fumed Hill. “And no one can tell me where it was. You should be able to go ‘Old Hairpin, lap four, black-and-white, here’s a photo’, job done.” 

Cammish took his time to get past Ingram: “That wasn’t easy. Wow, I won’t go into it but it’s got some performance, that car.” Ingram’s team-mate Adam Morgan also slipped ahead, and the points leader, despite his hard tyres, looked to have the measure of the pursuing Daryl DeLeon’s WSR BMW for third. Ingram thought he could even go forwards again: “I had pace over Adam and DanCam. And I still had two laps of boost in pocket, so I felt like we had a car that could actually have won that race, as amazing as that sounds.” 

“It was a pretty strong weekend all in all. We’ve obviously been fairly lucky with Ash getting caught up in drama in race two, because he should have won that really with the medium tyre. We got about as much out of it as we’re ever going to get, with a little bit of luck as well” Tom Ingram

And then comes our next flashback time… let’s go back to the 1975 British Grand Prix, where car after car went off as a sudden storm struck Club Corner at Silverstone. 

In this case, the top six of Cammish, Morgan, Ingram, DeLeon, Hill and Chris Smiley were in the gravel at McLeans. “I thought I was in control – until I wasn’t,” laughed Cammish. “Honestly, it was like someone dropped a ton of bricks on top of the bonnet. When I got to McLeans it was like a wall of water. I never saw it come in – I just drove straight into it and I was a passenger. I kept it out of the wall, kept it running, and pulled it back on in the lead, and then obviously it ended under the safety car, which was the right call.” 

Everyone clambered back on, but Gordon Shedden, the highest-placed driver not to fall off, had vaulted his Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport from seventh to third. Crucially, Sutton, delayed further by an adventure skimming the Old Hairpin gravel while trying to pass Shedden’s team-mate Aron Taylor-Smith, went from 11th to ninth. And that netted him a reversed-grid pole once fourth-placed Smiley’s Restart Racing Hyundai was kicked out for a ride-height infringement.

A sudden downpour struck race two at Donington

Photo by: JEP

Sutton, though, had to use the hard tyres. Ingram, on the mediums, started fifth. Only Josh Cook, third on the grid, had mediums in front of him, but his Toyota was suffering a wastegate issue. So Ingram was quickly up to second, then indulged in a titanic battle with Sutton that exhibited the best of both tin-top superstars as they fought hard – but fairly – before Ingram made it stick. And, following a late safety car, they did it again as Sutton tried to retaliate. 

“I was hoping it was going to be a bit more difficult for Tom to get through, but the moment he got into second I had borrowed time,” reflected Sutton. “When he got there I was having a conversation on the radio with the team. I was going, ‘Do we make this easy? Do we not? Do we let him go in front and we finish second?’ But I chose to put up a fight, put a bit of a show on, and then still brought it home second which was good.” 

Rowbottom, third again, was having his own radio traffic: “I said, ‘Do you know what? I’ll back everyone up to try and protect Ash a little bit’, because obviously he was on the hard tyre. So tried to repay some of the debt [from race two]…” 

Taylor-Smith did a fine job to win an all-hard-tyres fight with Hill for fourth, with the WSR BMW pilot reckoning “we had a stronger car here this year than we had last year, which is saying something. It’s just too little too late.” But his day was one of “what could have been” after his bid to pass Morgan on the first lap of race two led to double Hyundai contact with both the amiable Lancastrian and Senna Proctor. From here, he was playing catch-up. And he lost more ground than anyone else in the McLeans flood. 

No such problems for Ingram. “It was a pretty strong weekend all in all,” he beamed. “We’ve obviously been fairly lucky with Ash getting caught up in drama in race two, because he should have won that really with the medium tyre. We got about as much out of it as we’re ever going to get, with a little bit of luck as well.”

A thrilling 2025 tight fight is set to come to an end

Photo by: JEP