BTCC Oulton Park: Ingram overcomes late qualifying pause to grab pole

Ingram, who was allowed 4.5 seconds per lap of hybrid boost deployment on his Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N as part of the series’ new system of success handicaps, set a new qualifying lap record for NGTC machinery and finished up 0.186 seconds to the good.

The polewinning run came 20 minutes into the scheduled half-hour session, and Ingram followed up his quickest lap with another that was also quicker than anyone else managed.

Second fastest was Rory Butcher, who had just leapt from 29th and stone last due to a track-limits time deletion to second when the red flag appeared for the first of two occasions, because the Team Hard Infiniti of Rick Parfitt had conked out and was parked in the escape road at the Hislops chicane.

There were just over five minutes remaining of the session, so the clock was reset to allow for 10 minutes, only for Aiden Moffat’s Laser Tools Racing Infiniti to pull off at Island and cause a second stoppage with less than a minute to go.

Even so, Ingram’s pole never looked in doubt.

“I’m really pleased with that,” he said. “It’s great to get it [his Oulton Park poor record] off my back.

“It’s not been the kindest track to me, but it’s a byproduct of having a strong start to the year so I’ve always ended up coming here with a lot of ballast.

“With hybrid [penalties] you can still have a fantastic car, and the car is phenomenal – it did everything I wanted it to. We’re in good shape.”

Butcher, allowed 12s of hybrid usage, bounced back from a difficult start to the season, which continued as the teams arrived at Oulton – Speedworks Motorsport had to change the engine in his Toyota Corolla before proceedings kicked off on Saturday.

Dan Lloyd (10.5s hybrid) made it a good day for Excelr8 by backing