Tom Ingram made it two wins out of two on British Touring Car Championship season finale day on the Brands Hatch Grand Prix Circuit.
The 2022 and 2025 champion started his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback on pole position, but was forced by the sporting regulations to use the medium tyres. That usually proves something of a setback in the BTCC but, with the top five all using the same rubber, that was less of a handicap than might normally be expected.
Ingram made a good getaway to lead the front-row-starting Josh Cook, and was over a second ahead of the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla GR Sport by the end of the opening lap. The gap never got above 2s before, on the final tour, Cook used one of his two laps of TOCA Turbo Boost to finish just 0.600s behind. Ingram had just one lap in his allocation, which he never had to use.
“This season we’ve just been wrong place, things not quite fell our way,” said Ingram, whose victory wrapped up runner-up in the championship standings ahead of Dan Cammish.
“We’ve been fast this weekend and finished on a real high, which is great. Josh had good pace and was keeping me honest. Although I had a gap, it wasn’t plain sailing.”
From fifth on the grid, recently crowned five-time champion Ash Sutton got past Aiden Moffat at Paddock Hill Bend just after the start – partly helped by a small nerf to the Power Maxed Racing Audi A3 Saloon.
Photo by: JEP
Sutton then went after the Excelr8 Hyundai of Ricky Collard, and dived his Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus Titanium through at Paddock on the fourth lap, holding a big slide as he completed the move.
Sutton then set fastest lap but began to come under attack from the West Surrey Racing BMW 330i M Sport of Daryl De Leon, who was the highest-place runner on the soft tyres.
Both of them ran themselves out of TTB with two laps remaining, which meant that De Leon was now vulnerable to the next soft-tyred car, the PMR Audi of Mikey Doble.
Doble, who needed just one point to put the Independents title beyond reach of team-mate Aiden Moffat, wanted to clinch it in style. And he did just that by skimming the grass in Pilgrim’s Drop on the final lap when he got on the TTB to pass De Leon for fourth in the race.
Cammish brought his Alliance Ford home in sixth place, while Collard faded from his early third to seventh, and Moffat dropped to eighth, not helped by a quick trip through the gravel at Paddock on the second lap.
Dexter Patterson made it three PMR Audis in the top nine and the Jack Sears Trophy champion was rewarded with reversed-grid pole position, while Sam Osborne moved up into the final top-10 position on his farewell BTCC weekend with the Alliance Ford team after Dan Lloyd (Restart Racing Hyundai) was pinged with a track-limits penalty.
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