MARCUS SIMMONS
The dismal weather meant the BTCC went to a late kick-off, before polewinner Tom Ingram made it two superb victories with the Excelr8 Hyundai squad
The British Touring Car Championship dodged a bullet at Donington Park last Sunday. Heavy rain during April is hardly unheard of in the East Midlands, yet people queued for over an hour to enter the boggy venue. Those lucky enough to arrive before the scheduled 9.05am kick-off for support race action became the unfortunate ones, and had to endure four and a half hours of delay until the BTCC itself became the curtain-raiser – two hours after its scheduled start. After 30 seconds of action, the field trundled around behind the safety car for over 23 minutes while the tyrewall was rebuilt on the Craner Curves after a predictable first-lap shunt – and a marshal who had fallen over while working on that task was tended to by medics. It left just seven and a half minutes of racing; it was all rather depressing.
And now the BTCC field has another bullet to dodge, in the form of the much-improved Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N of 2022 champion Tom Ingram. Fastest in free practice one; fastest in FP2; fastest in two of his three qualifying stages; pole position; victory and fastest lap in race one; victory in race two; a ninth-to-fourth charge in race three despite minimal access to the vastly more significant hybrid-turbo power boost, and fastest lap; a nine-point championship lead. “Just a stonking amount of points – I can’t be disappointed,” he chirped as the sun – yes, it finally appeared! – began to set on Sunday evening. “But what I’m more excited about is the speed of that thing now – it is stupendously good.”
Yes, we got in three races; one in the wet, two in the dry. Yes, conversation turned once again to the effectiveness of the new-for-2024 regulations, which have effectively doubled the power boost of ‘push-to-pass’. They quite clearly worked, yet the irony was that one of the primary targets of series boss Alan Gow – to prevent the same driver claiming pole and winning both of the first two races – fell flat on its face, partly because of the boost increase. In the second race, Ingram got on his button and passed the West Surrey Racing-run BMW 330e M Sport of long-time leader Jake Hill with five laps remaining. “We probably surprised Alan with winning the second race,” chuckled Ingram with a glint in his
