Ingram sets stunning pole for BTCC Oulton Park round

Tom Ingram blitzed qualifying to take pole position for the British Touring Car Championship round at Oulton Park despite a severe restriction on boost.

The 2022 champion sits second in the championship, and therefore his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback had just three seconds per lap of TOCA Turbo Boost. But somehow, Ingram was able to scorch around the Cheshire parkland venue 0.473 seconds quicker than anyone else.

It’s fair to say that Ingram hid his light under a bushel in the opening two phases of qualifying. In the first, he was second in his group behind the customer Hyundai of Restart Racing’s Chris Smiley; in the second, he was fourth, trailing Smiley, Ashley Sutton and Adam Morgan.

But no one could hold a candle to the Coventry-based High Wycombe native in the Quick Six Shootout.

“That was unbelievable, quite frankly,” said Ingram. “It just was the most hooked-up thing I’ve ever had.

“I seemingly had limitless grip – it was outrageous. Around somewhere like here, which is a difficult circuit to link together, I’m proper chuffed with that.”

Smiley, who topped FP2 for the third time this season earlier in the day, was finally able to make it count in qualifying on the full 15s of TTB and will join Ingram on the front row.

But it was a bitter-sweet afternoon for Restart Racing – Smiley’s team-mate Dan Lloyd was second in his Q1 group, only to fail the ride-height test, meaning the team will have a car at either end of the grid.

Dan Cammish, on 7s per lap of TTB, edged out four-time title winner and current points leader Sutton for third in what will be an all-Alliance Racing Ford Focus ST second row.

Cammish was quickest in his Q1 group, and as usual improved through the segments to net another strong qualifying result, while Sutton was restricted to just 1s per lap of TTB.

For the second race weekend in succession, rookie James Dorlin made it into Q3, where he ended up fifth aboard his Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport.

Rounding out the Quick Six was Adam Morgan, who had an off in that final segment before recovering to post a respectable lap in his Excelr8 Hyundai.

Jake Hill, Laser Tools Racing with MB Motorsport BMW 330i M Sport

Photo by: JEP

Dorlin made the Q3 cut right at the death in the previous segment, with Excelr8 Hyundai veteran Tom Chilton the unlucky driver to drop out.

Joining the Surrey man on the fourth row will be One Motorsport Honda Civic Type R pilot Josh Cook.

Reigning champion Jake Hill was in much the harder Q1 group and was knocked out of Q2 late on in his West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sport.

Hill’s rookie team-mate Charles Rainford was slower, but in his group his time was quick enough to progress and he improved to ninth, ahead of the Excelr8 Hyundai of Senna Proctor.

Another to suffer from being in the tougher Q1 group was third-in-the-championship Dan Rowbottom, the Alliance Ford driver taking eighth in his split behind Hill on 5s of TTB.