How Ingram snatched the BTCC points lead on a weekend of Croft controversies

There were a fair few Newcastle United shirts among the throngs baking on the sun-soaked grass banks of Croft as the British Touring Car Championship hit the north last weekend. And a series that is regarded as the Premier League of UK motor racing became so in another unfortunate aspect: its refereeing decisions.

Out of contention on Saturday went championship leader Jake Hill due to British motorsport’s fatuous attempt to enforce regulations that cannot be policed properly; out on Sunday went Hill again and his West Surrey Racing stablemate Colin Turkington (twice) in incidents that provided controversy, appeals, and the ref waving ‘play on’ – to the benefit of new series leader Tom Ingram and the other main title contender, Ash Sutton.

It all left a disagreeable taste at the end of the weekend as drivers and their team managers traipsed to the TOCA bus to plead their cases to the jury, trudged back to their area in the paddock, then ambled back again to discuss another incident. And for Ingram, who was at the centre of one of the most controversial clashes, it ended on a joyful note.

His second, third and fourth positions, on a weekend when neither Hill nor Sutton won, gave him the biggest haul of points, putting him 21 ahead of Hill. And he escaped the hearing into his clash with Turkington in the final race with no action taken against either driver.

Yes, Ingram is on a roll. That three-day pre-season test at Anglesey in glorious sunshine unlocked everything required from a winter of development carried out by Excelr8 Motorsport on the Hyundai i30 N Fastback. OK, he didn’t win a race at Croft, but that’s largely because the BTCC regulations for 2024 have tipped us back from a period of relative sporting purity to the ‘let’s have as many different winners as we can’ ethos of half a decade ago.

“It’s a case in point of how strong this car is this year,” reflected Ingram at the end of Sunday. “The performance of the car this weekend has been staggering. Every time we’ve bolted a tyre on, soft or hard, it’s been great. It’s beyond a joy to drive – it’s done everything I’ve wanted it to. That’s enabled us to get the big points. Happy all round really.”

Ingram escaped sanction for his clash with Turkington in the final race and came away with the points lead

Photo by: JEP

The race winners at Croft were Turkington, driving away from the pack for his 15th BTCC success at the North Yorkshire venue and the 70th in total of his career; Josh Cook, who just as he did last time out at Oulton Park played the tyre game perfectly; and Ingram’s own team-mate Tom Chilton, the veteran Surrey extrovert raising his game after a period of race weekends of ‘you couldn’t make it up’ misfortune.

Chilton’s victory may have come in the reversed-grid race, the one purists sniffily deride, but it was a case of full circle for a driver who, in the first phase of qualifying, had set the quickest ‘legal’ BTCC lap time recorded around Croft since the end of the Super Touring days. Then it had all gone wrong in Q2, where he faded to eighth, bemoaning “understeer, wheelspin on power, no grip” on a set of soft tyres that he claimed felt like the harder, older rubber he’d used in free practice.

Quicker still, to the tune of 0.030 seconds, had been Dan Rowbottom, but this lap and his follow-up were both deleted due to exceeding track limits at the Jim Clark Esses. With the bearded Midlander’s qualifying group also including Hill, Ingram, Sutton and Cook, his third best lap, although it would have put him fourth in the other batch, left his Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus down in seventh – and outside the top six to progress to the second phase. Rowbottom was distraught.

"I’m doing better and learning as we go on, and I think this qualifying format is suiting me"
Dan Cammish

“Having looked at the footage I think we’re OK,” he sighed. “And if I’m honest I’d do exactly the same thing tomorrow. It’s disappointing. We spend a lot of money, and it’s a shit regulation if you can’t monitor it properly with sensors. It’s all down to the judge of fact and, as soon as they do you, you can’t argue with it.”

The same problem caught out Hill in Q2. He had just one second per lap of hybrid on his BMW 330e M Sport – well, theoretically, because he forgot to press the button – but had put in a mighty effort to record a lap that should have put him fourth, to progress to the top-six shootout.

“I feel pretty hard done by,” he fumed, adding that he wasn’t even told which corner he’d transgressed at. “I was being super-strict with myself. I went to go on the lap after but ran wide at Turn 2 [Hawthorn] through the marbles, and at the end of that lap I was going to come in, because Craig [Porley, his engineer] said we were safe. Then right at the end of the lap he asked me to go again, but my tyres just weren’t prepped.”

Cook was another who was miffed, his lap that should have put his Speedworks Motorsport-run LKQ Toyota Corolla GR Sport fourth (or fifth, behind Hill) struck off for his own offence at the Jim Clark Esses. Another contender eliminated from the final six in qualifying.

Rowbottom was among the several drivers who felt aggrieved at contentious track limit calls in qualifying

Photo by: JEP

“There’s nothing we can do about it,” he summed up. “I’ve looked at the video and onboard, and I was nowhere near being off the track. Even looking at it through officials’ rose-tinted glasses, it’s a long way from being track limits.”

Such is our reliance upon 1960s technology – ie none – to enforce fine judgement calls, and these had a big impact upon how things played out on Sunday during the races. It was Turkington who had emerged on pole position, although the BMW man had looked unconvincing in the first phase of qualifying in the weaker group, with a third-fastest time that wouldn’t even have put him in the top six from the other batch, visibly struggling to turn in at the slower corners. Then the tide turned.

“Q1 is the first time you’ve been on the new rubber,” explained the Northern Irishman. “The balance always shifts on them, and it’s hard to predict, so you try to compensate. But we nudged it in the right direction. You always try to get a good banker lap, and I knew mine would get me up there somewhere.”

Similarly, Dan Cammish, who is on such a consistent run that he’s creeping into title contention, put his Alliance Ford on the front row alongside Turkington.

“We have a habit of peaking when it really matters,” smiled the Berkshire-domiciled Yorkshire native. “Q1 was OK, Q2 we barely got through, and Q3 I put down a lap that really moved us on. It’s just me – I’m doing better and learning as we go on, and I think this qualifying format is suiting me.”

Ingram, on just three seconds per lap of hybrid, was third but felt “we should be on pole”, but a snatching of the left-rear tyre at Clervaux ruined his first hot lap. He therefore looked in very strong shape. Sutton, on 5s of hybrid, was sixth behind Aron Taylor-Smith and Rob Huff.

“A bit of a painful session,” he sighed. “The car wasn’t quite where we were expecting, and I got held up on two of my laps [on one by Ingram, the other Turkington].” On the other, he somehow held a massive slide at the Complex. “I just covered that up,” he chortled.

Turkington ended up taking the pole in qualifying and dominated the opening race

Photo by: JEP

Now came the tyre gambles, with the format this weekend of using the soft Goodyear for two races, the hard for one. Basically, it gave us two races – one of them monotonously processional – that proved only that the soft rubber is faster than the hard, which is all very interesting and exciting.

It’s fair to argue that this sporting regulation is arguably one variable too many. It wasn’t until all but Nick Halstead were on the softs for the finale that we got a properly entertaining touring car race…

Turkington only briefly looked under threat in the opener, in which the top four on the grid all opted for soft tyres. This was from Ingram, who had nosed inside Cammish at Hawthorn on the opening lap and, when the Ford skipped the chicane, completed the move on the run to Tower.

"I feel aggrieved because I’m defending my position on the inside against Ash into Tower, and he’s been using the hybrid on that lap, and from my perspective he’s just been caught out by the closing speed"
Colin Turkington

“It was great,” beamed Turkington. “Converting pole position into a win is often easier said than done but, with the car in the right place, I’d got hybrid to match anything that the others could potentially throw at me, so it was a case of getting through the first two laps.

“Tom had a look at me on lap two into Tower, but that was the end of the challenge. Then I could use a bit of hybrid, the tyres were switched on and away we go. Relatively straightforward.”

Cammish held off team-mate Sutton for third, while Taylor-Smith brought his Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall Astra home in fifth, and Hill used the soft rubber to climb from 11th on the grid to sixth. With five drivers ahead of him in the starting line-up starting on the hards, this was a surprising gambit from Hill.

He admitted later: “I would have run hards if we could do it again. It’s only because so many people ran the hards from such a long way forward. Although I got to sixth – great, I got some points back in the bag – but thinking back, we probably would have been better off doing the hard and getting further up in race two.”

Interestingly, Huff on the hard rubber finished closer to sixth-placed Hill than he did to the sister Speedworks Toyota of Cook in eighth.

Hill marched through the pack after his qualifying dramas in race one, but was turfed off by Chilton in race two

Photo by: JEP

“For me it wasn’t a gamble – it was the most sensible thing to do,” reckoned the 2012 World Touring Car champion of his tyre choice. “I had a really strong feeling that everyone behind me would go hard except Sutton on soft.” Don’t ever argue with the intuition of an East Anglian veteran…

Those two Toyotas therefore looked very strong for race two, with the top six from the opener all forced by the regulations to run the hard tyres. Now Cook was looking feisty, but on the opening lap he was forced to the grass at the Jim Clark Esses as he tried to run side by side with Huff and Taylor-Smith. That cost him a couple of places, but he followed Huff up the order past the hard-shod cars ahead.

Once they were in the top two positions, Cook homed in further, and on the 13th lap of 15 he pulled off a wonderful move that lasted from Tower to Barcroft. Also in the mix was Rowbottom, for whom a gear-cut glitch had impeded progress in the opening race, but got up to third and hounded Huff over the last couple of laps.

Behind him, Ingram held off Sutton for fourth, but the reigning champion had got involved early on with fellow four-time title winner Turkington on the run to Tower. On the hard tyres, the BMW was struggling. Sutton got into position for a move, but got caught out by Turkington being early on the brakes, and contact sent the Northern Irishman spearing down the grass, shooting across the bows of Sutton and Huff, and down to eighth position.

“It’s been deemed a racing incident,” said Turkington after the failure of the WSR team’s appeal against the decision to take no action. “But I feel aggrieved because I’m defending my position on the inside against Ash into Tower, and he’s been using the hybrid on that lap, and from my perspective he’s just been caught out by the closing speed.

“He’s coming at me very quickly. I’m on the hard tyre, and I’m defending on the inside, so I’ve braked earlier than he’s anticipated, and he sort of went through the back of me.”

More WSR BMW woe occurred when Hill, caught in a queue behind Taylor-Smith and Turkington, was turned lightly into the barriers at Sunny Out by contact from Chilton. And to rub salt for the Sunbury squad, Chilton then passed Turkington and got drawn on reversed-grid pole by Cook…

This was another ‘racing incident’ – and again WSR lost an appeal – albeit not according to Hill: “I got fired off by Tom good and proper, which was lovely of him.”

With race one front runners saddled by hard tyres in race two, Cook advanced to beat Huff

You can argue that Chilton had at least part of his Hyundai alongside Hill’s BMW; and ditto Ingram with Turkington in the final race as they battled for third. While Chilton scampered happily into a clear early lead thanks to an “epic” getaway, Ingram tried to pass Taylor-Smith for second, only for them to hold each other up with some side-by-side action through the Jim Clark Esses and for Cammish to superbly demote both of them into Barcroft.

Now along came Turkington, up from ninth on the grid. For a while it looked as though the top four were going to concertina together, and by half-distance Turkington was probing down the inside of Ingram at the hairpin.

Half a lap later, he got on the boost and they ran side by side, the BMW slightly ahead, through the Jim Clark Esses. Into the following Barcroft, Turkington appeared to move across in a bid to take the apex, Ingram was forced onto the grass, and contact fired the BMW into the barriers.

"I think Colin’s potentially used hybrid again to try and get clear of me, but hasn’t got far enough past. And then I think he’s tried to come and take the apex when I’m already there"
Tom Ingram

“I was having a great race, and I’d caught Tom and Dan without using any hybrid relatively early, and I had six laps of hybrid left,” related Turkington. “So my pace was excellent, and again I just feel it was unnecessary.

“I’d used the hybrid coming out of Tower, and then we went side by side although I was ahead through the Jim Clark Esses, and then we’ve obviously pinched through Barcroft. I just feel it didn’t need to happen – it felt overly desperate to hold onto position. You can sense when a car has got significantly more pace, and it’s not worth the fight to the death. Tom was over the grass and the contact put me in the wall.”

“Fairly fruity, wasn’t it?” chirped Ingram. “Colin was obviously very fast and looked quite punchy as well. Coming out of Tower he used hybrid to pull alongside, and then left me exactly a millimetre enough room for the right-hander, but pinched me, so we ended up getting caught together in the first part of the Jim Clark Esses, which then ran us wide.

“I think Colin’s then potentially used hybrid again to try and get clear of me, but hasn’t got far enough past. And then I think he’s tried to come and take the apex when I’m already there.

Turkington somehow continued despite his heavy damage in race three after contact with Ingram

Photo by: JEP

“It’s difficult. I tried to jump out of his way – I could see him coming so we ended up making contact and going across the grass. It was a dodgy one; it wasn’t a nice place to be in that scenario. Unfortunately, hard racing but from my side the move needed to have been done.”

While Ingram continued to take third behind Cammish, Turkington pulled the battered BMW back on track and even got into the points on the final lap as a Power Maxed civil war broke out between Taylor-Smith and Mikey Doble. There aren’t many people who crash at Barcroft and… “are still alive!” laughed Turkington. “I sort of stunned myself that the car was pointing straight. The hybrid overheated but the car felt like it did before.”

Team-mate Hill, meanwhile, stormed from 16th to fifth and was crawling all over fourth-placed Sutton, who had somehow rescued a massive moment at Sunny after contact from Huff.

“I’ve got a lot of time for Rob,” said Sutton. “As soon as the contact happened and he realised the situation I was in, he didn’t just steam past, he hesitated a little bit, and we left Sunny Out in the same position.”

Both Hill and Sutton remain very much in the title frame, and each loves the next track: Knockhill. But Ingram is confident too: “We’re in a happy place with the car. It’s working well at every circuit we’ve gone to. I think we’ll be very, very strong at Knockhill…”

Chilton ended the day on the top step of the podium, but it was his team-mate Ingram who came away the happiest

Photo by: JEP