Tom Ingram has taken first honours as the 2017 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship gets underway at Brands Hatch in Kent.
The young driver always goes well here and proved this once again by heading the times early on and then staying fastest for the whole session.
“We’ve got more time to find, but it’s always good to be at the top of the timesheets,” said Ingram.
But the whole field is as close as last season, if not closer with the top twenty six being separated by less than a second and the entire field is only two seconds apart.
Just to Illustrate how close things are, Ollie Jackson of AMD tuning was initially just behind Tom Ingram on the timescreens but by the end of the session he had fallen all the way down to twenty sixth.
Collard and Jordan’s BMWs ended up second and third with Turkington in sixth, the cars split by Adam Morgan’s newly liveried Mac Tools sponsored Cicely Mercedes and reigning champion Gordon Shedden’s Honda. Ashley Sutton was seventh on his debut for Subaru but with the other three cars of Cole, Plato and Price in twenty fourth, thirtieth and thirty second respectively, it’s likely there’s more to come. Price is making his debut for the team and with almost no time in the car, he really is in at the deep end!
Jack Goff was eighth for Eurotech, just in front of MG’s Aron Taylor-Smith.
Handy Motorsport’s Rob Austin completed the top ten after the team had played an April fools joke earlier claiming on Facebook that they wouldn’t be able to run due to their team radio only being able to receive radio two!
Dave Newsham was eleventh in his familiar Chevrolet Cruze but driving for brand new team BTC Norlin. Tom Chilton put the all new manufacturer backed Vauxhall Astra in twelfth. Thirteenth and fourteenth were Epps and Hill in their Team hard run VW CCs. Daniel Lloyd put the second MG in fifteenth and Jeff Smith completed the front half of the field in sixteenth for Eurotech.
The Shredded Wheat Motorbase Focuses are currently not where they want to be with Jackson, Davenport and Depper in twenty first, Twenty third and twenty seventh respectively.
Second practice is at 12:45pm with Qualifying live on the ITV website at 15:40
Full times can be seen on the website of the BTCC’s official timers, TSL Timing.
http://www.btcc.net/2017/04/01/early-promise-for-ingram-at-brands-hatch/ By Marc Waller
