Runner-up Ingram promises a step forward in 2019

BTCC runner-up Tom Ingram says that the lessons learned by him and his Speedworks Motorsport team will help him bounce back from the defeat at Brands Hatch and be even more competitive next season.

Ingram ( left) missed out on the title after finishing fourth in race two in Kent last weekend, but the three-time race winner thinks he left nothing on the table.

“I can’t look back at any part of this season with any regret,” he said. “We have had a series of circumstances that have spiralled against us over the course of the year but that is what makes you stronger. That is what pulls everyone in the team together closer. It makes you want it even more. We will come back stronger for next year. We know what we have done this year has been phenomenal.”

Ingram, who won three races over the course of the season, also paid tribute to champion Colin Turkington.

He said: “We had to give it everything, but well done Colin: he has done it again, hasn’t he? He is ever the professional: he scores the points, knows when he needs to, knows when he doesn’t need to. There was nothing more I could have done.

“When I went across the line, I asked over the radio: ‘is it over, is that it, is it gone?’ And Spencer [Aldridge, my engineer] went ‘yes’. He told me it wasn’t enough and your world sinks at that point and for me, I went and had a little cry in the truck and had a little five minutes to myself. It is hard to take, but we can’t look back at anything and think we should have done anything differently.”