Tom Ingram ‘confident and very relaxed’ after maiden Corolla outing

 

Tom Ingram enjoyed a trouble-free first day of running at Oulton Park as Speedworks Motorsport’s new Toyota Corolla made its long-awaited first appearance on-track.

A championship challenger with the proven Avensis platform over the last couple of years, Ingram and Speedworks will have increased backing from Toyota this year as they look to claim their first British Touring Car Championship titles.

The new Corolla, which has been built by the team over the winter, got its maiden outing at the Cheshire circuit on Friday and it left a good first impression on two-time BTCC independents champion Ingram.

“I’m confident and very relaxed,” Ingram said after his first laps in the Corolla. “It’s relaxed us a lot because we know that we haven’t got a monster on our hands, but we’ve got a monster of a car in another way. It’s exciting.”

Despite emerging as a proven frontrunner with the Avensis, Ingram wasn’t fazed by the switch to the new Corolla and the relatively unknown territory that comes with it.

“It was a bit of an unknown going into it because we’ve obviously gone from something that’s very long to something that’s very short,” he said. “There was a little bit of uncertainty with what was going to happen with it and how it was going to handle, but the first few ‘flying’ laps really filled me with confidence in the balance of the car.”

“You’ve got to change at some point, we were always going to find something new,” Ingram added. “It’s nice to have a new challenge, to go for something new and keep us all on our toes.”

The team is now heading to Spain to continue its pre-season testing programme, and Ingram says that the strong first day of running for the car leaves them in great shape going forward.

“We can go to Spain now and focus on performance rather than anything else,” he said. “Certainly when we start off we’ll need to do a bit of work just to get back to our knowledge base and base setup, it’s going to take a little bit of work but that’s what happens with a new car – like a bow and arrow it’s got to be pulled back before it can go forwards.”

“We’ll take a bit of time to get our heads round it but I think we’ll be in good shape.”