After his best performances of the season at Croft, Tom Ingram was firmly of the opinion that his season is moving in the right direction.

The 21-year-old has been a consistent points scorer in the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) this term and he earned three more top eight finishes in Yorkshire on Sunday.

Placings of eighth, eighth and seventh in races one, two and three respectively took his tally to 13 points finishes from 15 starts, and was made even sweeter by the fact he qualified 13th – despite some early promise in free practice.

He said: “After our pace in the final race at Oulton Park, I felt like we had taken a genuine step forward and I was excited heading to Croft. It’s one of my favourite circuits and I’ve always gone well there so we expected to be quick – although we did surprise ourselves a bit in practice.

“The car felt really strong, which gave us a lot of confidence ahead of qualifying; we knew it would just be a question of stringing it all together – and that was precisely what we didn’t manage to do. “It was immensely frustrating, because on my fastest lap, I was almost half-a-second up on my previous best when I hit traffic, which cost us a top five slot at the very least.”

But the Speedworks driver’s frustrations were soon put behind him as he pulled off a number of incisive moves in the first race to move himself up the order, bagging eight points in the process.

Ingram repeated the feat in race two before the High Wycombe racer went one better in the final outing of the day – despite his Toyota Avensis encountering some problems.

“We lost some aerodynamic performance early on in race three following the contact and also picked up a slow puncture, but other than that the car felt strong again thanks to all the hard work put in by the Speedworks crew and we could take the fight to the big boys,” he explained.

“It was fantastic to secure another top eight finish, and the only disappointment from the weekend was wondering what we might have been able to achieve had we qualified where we should.”

In all, Ingram took 25 points away from the Yorkshire circuit – his biggest return from any of the first five rounds of the BTCC.

His strong showing consolidated 12th place in the drivers’ standings and leaves him 32 points behind fellow Wycombe driver Jack Goff with five races left to take place.

“The most encouraging aspect is that we were quick in all three races and we’re not massively far away now from consistently cracking the top five,” said Ingram.

“It’s all going in the right direction and I can’t wait for the second half of the season.”