ACCELERATED PROGRESS IN BRITISH TOURING CARS
How the Hyundai team will move forward in 2021
When news emerged that Tom Ingram was leaving Speedworks Motorsport after a sevenyear relationship in the British Touring Car Championship, it sent shockwaves throughout the paddock.
One of myriad questions thrown up by that conscious uncoupling was: where would the two-time Independents Trophy winner go next? The answer was Excelr8 Motorsport, which is a decision that might have surprised a few. Excelr8 is entering its third year at the top level and its second with a brand new car. The presentation and commitment of the squad is not in question, but the results have yet to flood in with the Hyundai i30 Fastback N.
The team, which has a background in operating cars in the Mini Challenge UK and being a title winner in that class, had taken the brave step into the BTCC in 2019 with a brace of ageing MG6 GTs for
Sam Osborne and Rob Smith.
Last year, it rolled out two new i30 Ns for Senna Proctor and Chris Smiley against a very tough backdrop of limited testing in the lockdown shadow and a highly compact 27-race schedule. And yet, despite all that was thrown at the squad, it was rewarded with seventh in the teams’ points and produced some real headturning performances. They included a podium apiece for both drivers.
For Ingram, it was those glimpses of potential – plus a favourable commercial package – that meant
Excelr8, headed by husband and wife Antony and Justina Williams, won his signature in very short order.
Ingram explains his choice: “When it came down to it, it was a very easy decision because I am in the BTCC for two reasons: commercially is one, and I also want to win.
“Looking at the commercial side of it, Excelr8 has a package in place with all of its backers and it does a very good job with sponsors. Also, when I had the conversation, I was able to run it in the way I wanted to run it. I have got the branding and I can bring my backers with me. I can do it the way I wanted without there being problems. They were very much bending over to help me, which was nice to work with.
“And then the other side of it: when the Hyundai came out last year, you could see that Excelr8 had done a really good job with it. The team was slick and everything looked smart. It all fitted, and they didn’t make themselves look like fools. It got a podium on its first weekend with a new car.
“You can tell things when you look at a team, even from the outside: you can see those who are going about it in the wrong way and those who are doing a good job, and Excelr8 was doing a good job. Now it just needs a little bit of direction for 2021.
“They have had their first year, the ‘free’ year if you like of learning the car, so now it
is a question of steering it in the direction it needs to go and make it a quick little race car. It is a great shape and wheelbase, and there is no reason why this can’t be a mega package all around.”
The progress of the team has been remarkable. Justina Williams says that her and Antony’s dream to join the
BTCC grid had been a 10-year long one. While the ambition was there, it wasn’t until the pair sold their financial planning business in July 2018 that they had the wherewithal to make the jump.
Joining the grid in 2019 with the ex-Triple Eight Racing and AmDTuning. com MGs might have seemed like folly. They were the oldest chassis on the grid and were hardly likely to rip up any trees on track, but it was all part of a bigger plan and the step up to the BTCC was vital.
Justina Williams explains: “One of the reasons we made the step up was that we knew how much our team – our staff – wanted it as well. We felt that if we didn’t do something, we could lose a number of really good members of the team that we didn’t want to lose because they had ambitions to move up. In a way, it was a little bit selfish in that respect but the whole thing just felt right.”
And the MGs meant that the pressure would be off. The rookie team co-opted former TechSpeed boss and Eurotech team manager Marvin Humphries into the fold to add some experience, but it was mostly a team made up of total newcomers – including the drivers
Smith and Osborne.
“The reason we bought the MGs was because it was the only cars available that would give us the TBLs [TOCA BTCC Licence, which every entrant needs to compete],” explains Williams.
“It gave us a year where the team could learn – the cars, the championship and how the team could operate at that level. It wasn’t ideal but it was the only option and we had to go for it.”
The learning was done in 2019, and the team became familiar with the nuances of running in the tin-top series. But the ambitions didn’t stop there. After a sixmonth study working with ace designer and engineer Kevin Berry, one of the most respected men in the pitlane, who has worked with Triple Eight, BMR Racing and WSR previously, Excelr8 decided that the Hyundai would be the perfect base model to take the fight to the Hondas and BMWs. Still, building up a brand new car rather than buying an off-the-peg product from another team was a huge move for a team which was still essentially taking its fledgling steps.
Williams adds: “We could have bought a car that someone else had built and was on the market, but there would have been nothing different about that. There is no big story, there is no big new challenge or chapter for us. It would have been boring, and Antony and I felt like that wasn’t something we wanted to do.”
The new Hyundai set top-six pace at the maiden group test of 2020 at Silverstone’s media day in March, but then the year ground to a halt amid the lockdown dramas. For a squad that was desperate to get miles under its belt and understand its new toy, that was a hammer blow.
“Not being able to test was hard and everything was dramatically different from that point because we couldn’t do what we wanted to do ahead of the season,” explains Williams. “Effectively, we ended up going to race meetings and doing our testing in public. We just hadn’t had the opportunity, and it is in those moments you realise you have so much to do and so little time. It was tough on the team but they just got on with it – everyone just did their best and continued to learn.”
That strong performance in the pre-season test translated into immediate results. Smiley turned the car into a podium finisher in the reversed-grid race on its maiden race weekend at Donington Park in August to underline both the work of the team and the latent performance in the hatchback.
Smiley was delighted with the initial performance and the challenge that he was presented with in developing the front-wheel-drive machine. He went on to finish in 14th spot in the standings overall after the 27-race campaign and enjoyed the development role he found himself in last term.
Smiley, who has signed up again for 2021, says: “The whole programme lit my fire. I was right in the middle of the technical side with the set-ups and all that kind of thing from the off. That was from day one, and we are working really hard on that still.
“It was fast straight out of the box last year, but there were some factors which made it very very hard for us. At Donington we were in the headlines, and that was nice, but most of the other weekends we were there knocking hard on the door.”
As well as the prospect of a new machine under him, there were other aspects that made Smiley’s life tougher than in previous campaigns. He explains: “One of those issues last year was the time of year we were racing in [due to the revamped calendar, which started in August and finished in November], because the calendar had been delayed.
“We were at Snetterton in October, for example. Any set-up that I’d had before and I knew worked, it was very difficult to them translate that into different temperatures. The whole championship is so close, you only have to be a little bit out of the window for things not to work properly.”
The Carrickfergus man and the team have now had a few months to refine the set-up and work on any areas that he knows will improve the hardware. “There were a few key areas that kept cropping up in terms of set-up throughout the 2020 campaign. Those were areas we struggled in, and those are the areas we are going to work on,” says Smiley “It is [in] the handling. The car is as good as any other car out there, but it is a question of getting everything in line to make sure it all works like it should.
“If you are a little bit out of the window to the left or right with your car, you struggle because underneath, technically, all of the cars are very close. It is all about extracting the most out of what you have.”
And that will be the objective for
2021, but arguably the spotlight will be turned up to maximum now that Ingram is onboard. The pressure will be ramped up as Excelr8 now has a proven championship challenger.
Williams is unfazed about the extra scrutiny that might come her way. She says: “From our point of view, you could see it as pressure but, ultimately, Tom is going to be a huge part of our expected improvements with the car and the set-up.
“If anything, Tom actually inspires us and puts confidence in us and we have consistency with Chris remaining in the line-up too. There is a feeling now that it is going to happen, we are going to be at the front and we will be battling. Tom is so good to work with and he is, ultimately our team leader. He will do whatever it takes on the track, he has got great abilities there and he is brilliant off-track too. He is such an asset to us and the team.”
Ingram himself is fired up for the new programme. He will be leading the line in terms of turning the Hyundai into a consistent frontrunner, but that is a process he proved adept at when the Toyota Corolla hit the track in 2019.
“I feel more excited to be able to develop a car again than going into something that might have already been proven,” concludes Ingram. “I like that ability to grow [the car] with me and, from a selfish point of view, make it do all the things I want it to do.
“I wouldn’t want to go into a team where there had been someone like [four-time BTCC title winner] Colin Turkington, for example, in the drive before and be told that ‘Colin always used to do it like this so this is the way we do it’. That is not what I want to do. I want to go in and make it my car. I want to make it as good as I can. My engineer Spencer Aldridge has been there already and he is excited about this: there is no reason we can’t be winning straight away.” •
“I want to make the car do what I want” Tom Ingram