TOM Ingram produced a superb recovery drive to claim a podium finish in the first round of the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) season.
Ingram recovered from a disqualification in race one and an alternator failure in race two to finish second in the final race of the weekend at Donington Park.
Driving for Droitwich-based Team Vertu, the Coventry driver finished just ahead of teammate Ricky Collard.
Ingram won the BTCC title in 2025 but endured a frustrating first weekend of the season as he attempts to retain his crown.
Ingram said: “The start of a new season is always really exciting, and I arrived at Donington feeling very relaxed.
“There was obviously a little bit of a mess-up in terms of parking on the grid. I always give myself a margin for error in that respect, but clearly it wasn’t quite enough.
“I got the call over the radio fairly early on that I had a penalty incoming, so I just had to get my head down and try to build as much of a gap as I could and we so very nearly overturned it.
“To still finish second in the circumstances put us in a good place for Sunday’s first race, which went really well on-track, but it subsequently transpired that there had been a glitch with the new TTB system and for some reason, it hadn’t worked as it should have done in my car.
“There was no performance gain whatsoever, so that was really tough to take, but we fell outside of the regulations so that was that – and then the alternator decided to stop alternating before the start of race two.
“From there, we had to try to recover whatever we could from race three to make sure we got something out of the weekend.
“It was hard work, starting so far back and knowing I needed to take some risks but also knowing I couldn’t afford another non-score after losing so many points earlier in the day, meaning it was imperative to avoid doing anything reckless or getting caught up in any incidents.
“The car felt phenomenal and I was really pumped-up, and it was full-on the whole way through.
“I left absolutely nothing on the table – I don’t think I’ve ever given the tyres such a hard workout before and I probably came perilously close to picking up a track limits penalty, but I just had to keep cracking on.
“I used the boost where I needed to and picked my battles, and while I ultimately lost too much time fighting through the pack to be able to challenge for the win, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
“It was a fairly tricky weekend overall – being so fast and winning two races on the road but not getting to keep either of them was a hard pill to swallow – but to end it back on the podium was positive.
“We’ll also be in a fairly decent position TTB-wise now going to Brands Hatch, where we’ll look to secure the kind of results we should have come away with from Donington Park.”
Defending champion Ingram endured a frustrating start to his title defence with the driver disqualified from the first race.
Ingram thought he had made the perfect start to the season when crossing the line in first place.
However, Ingram received a post-race disqualification with his car deemed to have a significant overboost.
And Ingram did not start the second race after his car suffered from an alternator failure.
However, Ingram showed his champion mentality to finish second in the final race of the weekend to secure a first podium finish of the season.
Ingram finished on the podium despite starting the race from the very back of the grid.
The BTCC season continues at Brands Hatch on the weekend of May 9 and 10.
