Budding F1 star Ingram gets top team offer

He may still be only a teenager, but Tom Ingram was afforded a rare view inside the highly secretive world of Formula 1 recently – and it has crystallised his desire to join his racing hero Lewis Hamilton on the grand prix grid one day.

The young High Wycombe ace has for the past three years been a regular front-runner in the BRDC Stars of Tomorrow Championship – the same series that first set McLaren-Mercedes’ Hamilton on-track to where he is now – and in his debut campaign in 2006 claimed title glory in the hotly-fought Mini Max class, sponsored by the current F1 World Championship leader.

Indeed, Tom’s achievements over the past two seasons have seen him awarded a National/International Individual Sports Grant at the prestigious Sir Steven Redgrave Sports Bursary evening, held at Wycombe Wanderers’ home ground of Adams Park.

Amongst an audience of more than 150 people, the 15-year-old got the opportunity to meet and chat to such sporting luminaries as former Paralympic World Judo Champion Ian Rose and a number of Beijing Olympic medal-winning rowers.

“It was good,” he acknowledged. “We made several new contacts and got a decent amount of money too which will help us. I’ve been to quite a few awards evenings now, but they still mean a lot to me. It really is a privilege, because not everybody gets invited to them.”

Privilege it may be, but Tom’s invitation to the ceremony was a deserved one, and one for which he has had to work – and race – incredibly hard. Indeed, it was just one of three notable experiences of late for the reigning Wycombe and Marlow Sports Personality of the Year, as he also undertook a week’s work placement at Banbury-based Prodrive, one of the world’s leading private motorsport concerns and an outfit that has achieved glory in both the World Rally Championship with Subaru and the iconic Le Mans 24 Hours with legendary British marque Aston Martin.

“That was really good,” Tom enthused. “I really enjoyed it, and I was thrown straight in at the deep end – the first thing we did was fit a fuel tank! I’ve fitted a fuel tank in a kart before, but that’s a little bit easier…

“They gave me lots of advice, though, and were really patient with me too which was good. On the first day, every nut I tightened they would check was done up alright, but as the week went on they realised I was capable and trusted me to do a good job.

“I was really mucking in. The work we were doing was focussed around building one of their Group N rally cars, the new Subaru Impreza, which was pretty exciting. Then on the fourth day one of the cars came back from the Ulster Rally; it had caught fire on the event, so we were cleaning it out and replacing the parts that had burnt out.

“I learned so much; you never realise how much hard work actually goes on inside a race team behind closed doors.”

Indeed, so much did Tom impress Prodrive that they offered the Booker-based star an apprenticeship – what he acknowledges is a ‘fantastic opportunity’ – and he moved on to his second work placement, at F1 team Red Bull Racing, with the words ringing in his ear: “If Red Bull don’t offer you a job, we will!”

He spent his two weeks at the energy drinks-backed squad helping to build up one of the cars and preparing it to be race-ready, and he admitted the experience had been somewhat different to that at Prodrive.

“There I had been working on a normal road car stripped to do rallies,” Tom explained, “whereas an F1 car is made out of carbon fibre and designed for speed. The Red Bull factory is a lot bigger too, and there wasn’t an ounce of dirt anywhere – everything was pristine. F1 cars are a lot cleaner, and you don’t get covered in mud!”

The Monodraught-backed ace also met Red Bull F1 star Mark Webber, but without doubt the highlights of his time there, he revealed, were the two days he spent with the test team at Silverstone and the chance to climb into the car himself and gain a foresight of what one day may just lie in-store for one of the UK’s most promising young motor racing talents.

“They said, Cosworth are coming tomorrow to make sure the car starts alright; do you want to jump in there and fire it up?” Tom related. “I never expected to be able to do anything like that; it was a bit surreal, but a huge bonus.

“They let me flick all the switches, pull the clutch out and go up and down the gearbox to check the hydraulics were functioning properly. When you let the clutch out in a car you normally get a bite, but because it’s a hand clutch in an F1 car you don’t feel that. The only way you can tell if the car is running or not is by looking at the wheels. That was a bit of a surprise.

“I had ear plugs in and there was a big tube covering the exhaust to stop the fumes – and it was still really loud! We were revving at about 7,000rpm; the whole room was vibrating! They told me the engine will rev up to about 20,000rpm. You just can’t imagine what it must feel like flat-out… Not many people can say they have sat in an F1 car when it’s been running.”

Reflecting on his past few weeks and mulling over Prodrive’s offer, it is clear that Tom’s budding motorsport career is set to step up another gear. Deep down, though, his heart remains behind the wheel – and the Red Bull experience in particular has only made him even more determined to one day live out his dream of racing in F1.

“I really, really enjoyed it,” he summed up. “Both Prodrive and Red Bull said I was the best work experience person they had ever had, and one day I’d just love to be able to compete for one of them to help to pay them back for all the hard work they put in…”

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