Tom Ingram returns to the top step in Silverstone Race 3
Having scored only two podiums in the last 11 rounds, neither of which being a race win, Tom Ingram, the 2025 British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) Champion, has returned to the top step at a rain-soaked Silverstone.
Pole sitter, Aiden Moffat, had to fight a sideways car in turn one to carry enough speed not to lose first place to Áaron Taylor-Smith who tried to take the outside line. Having gone from third to nearly taking the lead, Taylor-Smith went wide on the exit of Copse and lost track position to Rowbottom, who started in fifth, and Tom Ingram.
The driver who won from 12th in Race 2, Ash Sutton, went eighth to sixth before lap three, but was unable to make the same progress as earlier in the afternoon.
As Dexter Patterson put a brave opvertake on Daryl De Leon in the mid-pack, Rowbottom was beginning to pull Moffat back towards him and may have fancied taking a win. Unfortunately Rowbottom's windscreen started to mist up and the worsening visibility decelerated his pace.
Once on his tail, it did not take long for Ingram and Sutton, who had climbed further up the order to fourth, to dispatch of Rowbottom and start chasing Moffat. The duo didn't make the overtakes without drama, as Ingram had to take the outside line of Luffield and out drag Rowbottom on the National Pit Straight while Sutton went off the road in Brooklands while correcting a snap of oversteer.
Sutton took the opposite approach to the overtake a lap later, diving to the inside of Luffield when Rowbottom drifted slightly wide.
Taking inspiration from Sutton's overtake, Ingram mirrored it on the leader on lap 11, taking Moffat on the inside of Luffield. Once again Moffat was mugged on the inside of the same corner when Sutton caught him two laps later.
Despite his dominant pace earlier, Sutton was unable to catch Ingram in the drying conditions and finished the race four seconds behind the Team Virtu driver. Moffat finished in third, only three tenths ahead of Gordon Shedden who was lucky to get away with a big lock up a few laps from the end.
At the back of the pack, Nicolas Hamilton beat Lewis Selby to 20th by 67 thousands of a second.
Thrilled to be the winner again, Tom Ingram said: "We've needed a good result for a while, so it feels fairly emotional to get one because we've not had the cleanest run. To get one like that is absolutely fantastic."
The BTCC returns for the final round at Brands Hatch on the 11th October.
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