Ingram hails 'really special' Corolla pole

Tom Ingram says the Toyota Corolla's first ever British Touring Car Championship pole position is testament of his Team Toyota GB outfit's 'sheer passion of wanting to win'.

Ingram secured the Corolla's first pole position in the series after defeating Honda's Dan Cammish by just 0.002s during qualifying at Snetterton.

The Team Toyota GB driver appeared to find another gear in qualifying and broke the existing pole position lap record by over 0.4s to secure Speedworks Motorsport's first pole as a manufacturer outfit with Toyota.

"I’m really happy," Ingram told Crash.net. "It means the work that we’ve done up until this point has been worthwhile. We said all the way along, ‘give us until the summer break’.

"If we’re still struggling after the summer break, then you can criticise us. Until then, let us do what we need to do in terms of understanding the car.

"It’s a really exciting time now that we’ve come out of the summer break, understood the car, had the day two test which was so useful for us and get pole position.

"The work that’s gone on over the summer break has been insane. The work ethic from everyone in the team has put in has been nothing short of amazing and just led by sheer passion to want to win."

Such was the balance of his car during qualifying, Ingram said the Corolla felt better than the previous Toyota Avensis his team ran so successfully during the past few seasons.

"We’ve not won a race today, we’ve qualified on pole, which I almost take more gratification from," Ingram continued.

"The car had to be right. I had to be right and the circumstance had to be right. Sometimes you can take more gratification from that than a reverse grid win.

"I’m hoping this is going to be the start of a very strong second half of the season. Just in terms of getting back in the mix and start to get a couple of podiums and a couple of race wins.

"It felt absolutely perfect. It felt better than the Avensis ever did, which is exciting because that was one hell of a machine.

"At that point you think ‘we’ve got something here’ and that’s really special."

Ingram already took the Corolla's first win during the reverse grid race earlier in the season at Donington Park, but since then the 2018 BTCC runner-up has admitted getting all the aspects of the Toyota to work in tandem has been a challenge.

"It’s just been pulling everything into a window that works. Everything individually worked very well. But it didn’t work as a complete package," Ingram explained.

"The front end wasn’t talking to the back end, that wasn’t talking to the brakes, that wasn’t talking to how we get on the power.

"Individually, braking was very good. Initial turn in was good, mid-corner was good and the back end would rotate but it wouldn’t do nicely together.

"That’s what we’ve worked very hard on. Working on every single strength of the car and turning it into a complete car that works."