Me and my shadow...

Tom Ingram’s rivalry with Jake Hill will be no more in 2026. That’s because Hill, the 2024 BTCC champion, is heading into the world of international endurance racing. Their proximity to each other on track has been a recurring theme since 2010, when both were 16 years old, and Ingram beat Hill to the title in the BTCC-supporting Ginetta Junior series. And it even featured at the 2024 Goodwood Revival, when the TVR Griffith-mounted Ingram pipped the AC Cobra of Hill to the flag in the RAC TT Celebration – one of the best races seen at the event.

“Jake has been a thorn in my side as long I have his,” reflects Ingram. “He’s the person you would always somehow be on circuit with, no matter what happens. In Ginetta Junior, a GT Supercup car, in a historic car at Goodwood, whatever it might be, somehow we’re always magnets, and end up having a battle. It’ll be a big change not to have that.”

What does Ingram remember of that 2010 Ginetta season? “I don’t think either of us realised what we were signing up for. We were both just mad-keen to go and win races. Jake’s approach was totally different to mine. My approach has always remained the same, to just stay fairly level-headed and bank the points, whereas Jake was always ‘go for it’.

“That Ginetta Junior season he won more races than me [Hill 10, Ingram five]. But if he won, the next race would be a non-finish, whereas I’d finish second-second… It’s quite funny how it’s been the same with us over the years. Jake would always be slightly quicker here, but fall foul there. I think Jake and I have brought each other on. It’s that classic thing. If you play golf with somebody worse than you, you just drop to the same level, whereas every single year Jake would get better and I would get better, and we would exchange these hundredths, tenths over the course of the years that would ultimately improve the both of us.”

With Hill’s father Simon well known in the sport as a racer, commentator and safety car driver, the tale of his lad’s struggles to keep the financial boat afloat in the sport was well-known. But it was a struggle too for Ingram, who relied on the altruism of his Ginetta teams and the Jason Plato-helmed KX Academy to keep going, and finally got his break in the BTCC for 2014 as his prize for winning the Yorkshire constructor’s G55 Supercup the previous season. “We were completely green to the whole thing,” Ingram explains of his family. “You make your own luck, I get that, but at the same time I was just… lucky.”

Their Goodwood battle was a classic: “You couldn’t really have scripted it. Jake and I were going for the BTCC title – there was only a handful of points between us – yet we get bolted in these old cars and somehow we’re swapping thousandths again. I think the rivalry was as intense as it was because it was Jake and I. The nice thing is we can be fairly civil off circuit. We’ve fallen out more times than I care to think about, but I at least know that if Jake turned around and said, ‘Do you want to go for a beer?’, I’d be, ‘Why not?’”