How Ingram conquered Europe
After battling budget problems and anxiety the 25-year-old Brit overcame it all in 2019. By Stephen Brunsdon
This year has been something of a revelation for Chris Ingram. It was a landmark year even if, according to the man himself, it was never meant to be. Alongside co-driver Ross Whittock, he became the first Briton to win the European Rally Championship since Vic Elford over 50 years ago.
His crowning moment at the final round of the season in Hungary was never guaranteed until the very end though, as he flirted between success and failure. In short, it was a microcosm of the arduous journey Ingram has travelled in his career.
“I fell in love with rallying when I was about 10 years old when my dad [former rally driver Jon] took me to the Trackrod Rally,” Ingram says.
“Everything associated with rallying; the smells, the fuel, the echo of cars in the forests, I just loved it.
“My dad got me started and he helped me financially. But, when we realised that I was decent, we’ve always struggled [to find] money.”
His first steps in rallying came in the F1000 British Junior Rally Championship between 2009-11, claiming the title in his final season.
At the age of just 17 he made his debut in the British Rally Championship in 2012, taking the Renault Twingo R2 Trophy in ’13 and the same year had his first foray into the ERC on the Ypres Rally.
He took part in further rounds in
2014 with the help of Renault Sport but, as has come to dictate his rallying career to date, his budget began to run out towards the end of the season.
Fortunately for Ingram, he was picked up by Peugeot UK. That allowed him to continue competing in the ERC before joining the works Opel team for 2016, who guided him to the ERC3 title that same season.
“That was an unbelievable opportunity,” Ingram explains.
“The set-up was a proper junior factory team. We got engineers, data and a test programme. Just as I’d thought everything was going to be game over at the end of the previous year, these things happened at the right time.
I’ve never had any big investment, I come from a very humble family and haven’t been supported [financially] by them since I was 17.”
His move to Opel also coincided with Whittock becoming his co-driver towards the end of 2017, with Ingram winning a second ERC3 – and Junior Under 27 – title before moving up to the R5 category for the following season.
At such a high level of competition, the expectations are always massive when it comes to delivering on promise. The pressures put on young drivers these days have increased tenfold for a number of reasons and are not helped by stand-out performances from the likes of teenage sensations Kalle Rovanpera and Oliver Solberg, who come from rallying dynasties.
Limited budget reduced Ingram to less than 20 miles of testing at the start of this year and, with the combined pressure of needing good results and bringing his Skoda Fabia R5 home without any damage, it took its toll on the Mancunian driver.
“Journalists are all very quick to praise these drivers like Rovanpera and Solberg who, don’t get me wrong, are unbelievably talented and quick, but they’ve literally been in a rally car since they were kids,” Ingram adds. “They’ve never had to worry about a single thing apart from driving fast.
“This year has been the most difficult of my life, I have been under so much pressure because the budget has been so tight. I was so anxious and it really affected my mental health to turn up to these events and prove I was good enough to everyone, trying to take the next step and then going home and being in a horrible environment and having no money. The contrast of living my dream on rallies and then going home and having nothing is massive.”
Pressure is often one of the most misunderstood elements of elite sport.
While some thrive on the demands placed on them, others can wilt. For Ingram, he had reached rock bottom by mid-season, lost all confidence and crucially was running out of money yet again.
In times like these, he could have been forgiven for packing it all in following an agonising ERC1 Junior title defeat – and subsequent loss of a €10,000 prize – to Czech star Filip Mares on the latter’s home event in Zlin by just 0.3 seconds. But the opposite happened.
“When we lost the championship, we gained a lot of self-belief because we had nothing to lose,” says Ingram. “I couldn’t drive how I used to: the anxiety and the pressure just kept building and it was making me push too hard all year. It took me getting to the bottom to realise that I just needed to relax.”
That approach to the final two events of the year – in Cyprus and Hungary – didn’t deliver his elusive first overall ERC win, but the bigger triumph was a history-making first British ERC title for 52 years.
“I couldn’t give a sh*t if we never won a round this year to be honest,” says Ingram. “Who cares about that if you can win the championship instead? The first Brit in over 50 years to do so, nobody can say anything [against that].”n