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Tom Ingram overcame both a complete lack of wet-weather running and engine dramas to register another top six finish in his maiden campaign of car racing as the Ginetta Junior Championship visited Donington Park at the weekend – but the young High Wycombe ace fears his season may go no further as funding has dried up.

Having graduated from karting – after eight years that yielded no fewer than 13 major titles, including the BRDC Stars of Tomorrow crown, Tom has already made a real impression as his fledgling car racing career gets off the grid in the one-make, British Touring Car Championship-support series, regularly attended by as many as 40,000 fans and broadcast live on ITV4.

Eighth place on his Brands Hatch debut was followed by a superb fourth position and then – outstandingly – a rostrum finish next time out at Thruxton, as the 15-year-old regularly belies his status as arguably the most inexperienced driver in the field in terms of time in the car. Heading to Donington for round three, he was undeniably in buoyant spirits.

“We walked the track when we got there,” he related, “and going down the Craner Curves was pretty amazing. You see it on TV, but to experience it close-up like that is something else. The whole track is a real drivers’ circuit, sweeping up and down and from corner-to-corner and gearchange-to-gearchange – you don’t really get much chance for a rest around the lap!

“It was raining throughout Friday practice, and you can’t believe just how slippery the track is in the wet – it was great fun! It was my first time in the car in the wet, and I was just power-sliding and completely sideways through some of the corners at first – it felt like being back on the skid pan again! It was all steer and counter-steer as the car kicked back.

“At one stage I got back on the throttle when I thought the car was pointing in a straight line again and it just spun me round. I had a couple of ‘moments’ to be honest, but you’ve got to find where your limits are just as long as you don’t chuck it in the gravel or barriers like a lot of people did. I think there were something like 12 red flags in the space of three hours…”

Happily, Tom was not the cause of any of them, and – a bout of sickness aside – eighth spot at the end of the opening day having run inside the top half dozen for most of it was a highly encouraging start. Fully aware that a talented driver can compensate for a lack of experience when the weather conditions turn inclement, hopes for qualifying were high – but an engine problem would see the Monodraught and Joe Bloggs-backed speed demon unable to get fourth gear, meaning he was having to contend with a gear less than everybody else and leaving him down in an entirely unrepresentative 16th position at the close.

“I knew the times weren’t there,” he confessed, “but I felt like I literally couldn’t push the car any harder; it was sliding through the corners enough as it was. I was getting on the power as early as I could on the exit of the corners, but no matter what I did I just couldn’t keep with them.

“I would catch them on the brakes and through the corners, but on every straight they would just pull out half a car length on me – which equates to around two car lengths a lap around there. I was following one driver, and though I closed right up into every corner, when we went to accelerate away again he was gone.”

The issue was subsequently traced to a 2007-spec engine mapping having been mistakenly left on the ECU (engine control unit) last year, when the car should have been equipped with 2008 maps. That had resulted in the spark plugs becoming jet black and prevented the engine from revving high enough to reach fourth gear.
“The team owner Simon Moore told me I must have just driven the absolute balls off it to get up as high as I had been at Thruxton!” Tom joked. “The mapping was changed, and when I woke up on Sunday morning I found it revved a lot more and was a lot more responsive on the throttle and I thought ‘we could be on for something here’.

“It was dry on the warm-up lap for race one, but as we were sitting on the grid it began to drizzle. It carried on like that for the first four laps and it was good fun fighting my way through, but then going uphill onto the straight we were suddenly greeted with flat-out rain. We got to the last chicane and it was absolutely soaking wet, and after that everybody was just tip-toeing around trying to keep it on the island – but at the same time of course you still have to push as hard as you dare to stop others from steaming past you.
“At one point coming onto the back straight we were three-abreast; I had my team-mate David Moore to the left of me and Max McGuire to my right on the inside. It was like that all the way down the straight, and at the end of it I looked across and saw both of them still there and I thought ‘there’s no way I’m giving this up’, so I just braked immensely late and cut across in front of Max and managed to keep both places. I was pretty proud of that, but it did get a bit hairy for a moment…”

Hairy or not, sixth at the chequered flag – a ten-place improvement on his grid position and barely six tenths of a second shy of fifth – was a superb result for the Tockwith Motorsports star, and Tom would go on to successfully battle against a far-from perfect set-up and a succession of knocks in a fully wet race two to cross the line 11th and preserve his 100 per cent finishing record so far in 2009.

Moreover, the performance has kept the reigning Wycombe and Marlow Sports Personality of the Year firmly in the hunt in an excellent fifth in the drivers’ standings out of 24 competitors, and comfortably top rookie – the only question now is whether he will be able to continue his impressive challenge.

“The conditions in the second race were tough,” he concluded, “and it was just about keeping it on the circuit for a lot of the time, because it really was hammering it down. I was starting on the wetter side of the track on the outside – the inside had been dried out more as it was on the racing line. I wheel-spun away and got a huge slide leaving the grid, but I managed to make up a couple of places on the first lap and then I got launched from behind. Later someone pushed me out wide, drove down the inside of me and then turned across my nose, which has left us with a lot of damage to both the front and rear of the car.

“I haven’t really had much time to think about what happens next or whether we’ll be even be racing in round four at Oulton Park, because we’ve got so many other things going on. We’ve got to raise the finances to be able to continue, because the way things are we’re not going to be able to complete the season. It would be devastating for me if we can’t carry on.”

Photo by Lee Foxon