Thruxton BTCC: Ingram breaks lap record to clinch pole

The two were dicing for the top spot from the outset, swapping fastest lap times, but handful of those laps were removed for exceeding track limits, gaining an advantage.

It looked as if the front row had been decided early, but the duo found themselves split by a flier from Aiden Moffat who launched himself to the front row.

Heading into qualifying, the outright lap record was a 1m16.192s, set by Andrew Jordan in 2014, but Ingram wrestled the Toyota around the 2.3-mile Thruxton circuit to go 0.031s quicker than Jordan's time.

The pair of Triple Eight Racing MG6s had yet another strong showing, formation flying in fourth and fifth, half a second behind Ingram’s record-setting time.

Adam Morgan, Jeff Smith, Jordan, Aron Smith and Sam Tordoff rounded out the top ten in what was a surprisingly incident free session, running green from start to finish.

Qualifying results - Top 10:

Pos	Driver	Car	Time/Gap
1	Tom Ingram	Toyota	1'16.161s
2	Aiden Moffat	Mercedes	0.033
3	Matt Neal	Honda	0.086
4	Josh Cook	MG	0.416
5	Ash Sutton	MG	0.566
6	Adam Morgan	Mercedes	0.650
7	Jeff Smith	Honda	0.665
8	Andrew Jordan	Ford	0.684
9	Aron Smith	Volkswagen	0.703
10	Sam Tordoff	BMW	0.726