British Touring Car Championship ace Tom Ingram dropped in to Toyota Deeside engine plant ahead Oulten Park race on Sunday

The British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) is Cheshire-bound this weekend as the race series heads into Oulton Park.

Team Toyota GB ace Tom Ingram – a two-time BTCC independent champion – is targeting a podium finish on Sunday in the Speedworks Motorsport Corolla.

Tom and the team paid a visit to the Toyota Engine Plant on Deeside Industrial Estate on Thursday with the all his – new for 2019 – race-prepared Toyota Corolla.

Employees at the engine plant got the chance to talk to Tom and get close the Speedworks Corolla which made its BTCC debut at Brands Hatch in April.

“It was great to meet him, he’s really easy to talk to and happy to answer questions. The BTCC car looks fantastic, I want one.” Said one of the engine plants staff. 

[Tom Ingram, Driver, Team Toyota GB at Deeside Toyota Engine Plant]

The Northwich based Speedworks team had a tour of the production lines at the Deeside plant and saw how engines are produced including aluminium casting, machining and assembly and testing, and were amazed to hear an engine is produced every 44 seconds.

Ahead of Sunday’s Oulton Park race, Tom said:

“For me, Oulton Park is one of the best race weekends of the season. From a driver’s perspective, it’s a thrill ride from start to finish, all challenging corners and undulations and massively rewarding when you get it right.

Qualifying counts for more than at most circuits simply because it really isn’t easy to overtake there when you start further down the order, and success ballast plays a significant role when it comes to extracting single-lap speed.

I think the Toyota Corolla should be well-suited to the track, though, and one of the advantages of conceding a little bit of ground at Croft is that we go to Oulton carrying less weight than we have done previously. With that in mind, I see no reason why we shouldn’t be able to qualify inside the top ten and then move forward from there.

“I was reminded last week of the slightly jarring statistic that Oulton is the only circuit on the BTCC calendar at which I haven’t yet been on the podium, so one of the first objectives this weekend has to be to set that record straight…”