Pole-sitter Ingram buoyant after fastest ever Oulton Park BTCC qualifying lap

Tom Ingram has described his EXCELR8 Motorsport Hyundai i30N 'as the best FWD car he's driven around Oulton Park' after setting the fastest ever British Touring Car Championship qualifying lap around the Cheshire circuit.

Ingram finally broke Jason Plato's existing Oulton Park qualifying lap record, which was set during the 2015 season, after producing a 1'25.468s in Saturday's 30-minute qualifying shootout.

His fifth career pole position also delivered a maiden pole for the Hyundai I30N and the EXCELR8 Motorsport outfit.

"Mega. Really, really chuffed," Ingram told Crash.net. "It’s a nice position to be in. The car just felt really good. It’s nice to do a lap when the car is just feeling ace. It just did everything I wanted it to do. I’m really happy.

"We fiddled throughout FP1 and FP2. It was nice to fiddle and see what worked and what didn’t. Off the back of that, we found the middle ground and went from there

"We put a lot of hard work in today [Saturday] to get that. That didn’t come easily to us. It’s probably the best I’ve felt in the car. It’s the best FWD I’ve driven around here."

With overtaking usually proving difficult around the tight Oulton Park layout, Ingram feels in a good position to score strong points after enduring a tricky weekend last time out at Thruxton.

"We know that qualifying is the most important of it. So, to get a good result in qualifying sets us in a good place for race day. We need to get a good start and focus on that," Ingram continued.

"We get a bit more [hybrid] deployment for qualifying and we have the slight advantage of being able to use it for a few more laps in the race.

"Round here, I do think it’s making quite a big difference to be able to use it. You need something to give you that little bit."