Thomas Ingram Hill will make his single-seater debut in GB4 this season with Fortec Motorsport, but he says he is “on the back foot” because of a lack of testing.

By George Sanderson

Ingram Hill comes to GB4 having secured 11th overall with nine top-10 finishes in the 2024 Ginetta Junior Championship. The 15-year-old made his debut in the championship at Donington Park in the final round of 2023, taking ninth in his first race.

GB4’s official test at Snetterton on 5 and 6 March was Ingram Hill’s first experience behind the wheel of his Fortec Motorsport machine. He was announced at the team on 9 January 2025.

Over the course of the two days in Norfolk, Ingram Hill completed 121 laps, split almost equally between the two days.

He was 11th and 13th fastest on Wednesday and Thursday respectively, closing the gap to overall leader Leon Wilson from 1.958 to 1.401 seconds. Speaking to Feeder Series after the test, he said he was not focused as much on lap times as on the testing plan Fortec set out for him.

“It’s quite hard to look at [the lap times] because for the first day it was literally our first day ever in the car. Then the second day, we ran olds [tyres] until after lunch, so that’s how you see the difference of [the] third and fourth sessions,” he said.

“It’s a plan. We’re structuring it. Just because we didn’t do the first couple of tests compared to other teams, we’re having to make sure we’re structured and making sure we’re doing everything to the correct plan, and Fortec have done that very well.”

Drivers stepping up from the closed-wheel Ginettas to open-wheelers face differences in how they drive each car, as Ingram-Hill explained.

“In the Ginetta, you’re on road tyres; in this you’re on full slicks,” he said. “[It’s a] massive difference, just finding where the limits were, attacking the braking zones and finding where that was.”

While in Ginetta Junior, Ingram Hill drove at every circuit on the 2025 GB4 calendar. Still, his learning process also extends to the circuits themselves.

“In Ginetta, you see a lot more than you do in the GB4 – or any single-seater, for that matter,” he explained. “You’re relearning everything. The lines in Ginetta are completely different. Obviously, you can’t go so much over the kerbs in the GB4 compared to the Ginetta.”

In comparison with the Tatuus MSV GB4-025, the Ginetta “didn’t have that much grip”, Ingram Hill said. This meant he had to adjust to carrying more speed through corners and find the limits of adhesion on the track surface. Ingram Hill said his handful of spins have been “part of the learning process” for entering a new championship.

He also joins a team with a history of success within the GB4 Championship. Last season, Fortec Motorsport guided Linus Granfors to drivers’ championship glory, with six victories and four further podiums to his name. Nikolas Taylor also claimed the drivers’ title with the team in the inaugural edition of the championship back in 2022.

Ingram Hill insisted he wasn’t feeling the pressure to live up to the successes of past Fortec drivers. “Being younger,” he said, “means I have more time to develop”. 

Alongside Thomas at Fortec this season are Jack Taylor and Luca Magnussen. Taylor, who stepped up to single-seaters in 2023, secured one podium in 2024 and remains at the team for a second GB4 campaign. Magnussen – whose father, Jan, and half-brother, Kevin, both raced in F1 – is a karting graduate who competed for Denmark at the FIA Motorsport Games in the Karting Sprint Senior category in October. This season will be the 15-year-old’s first in cars.

“Jack has the experience in single-seaters, so it’s quite good to have some comparison to him and also to learn off him,” Ingram Hill said. “[Luca] is going to develop alongside me, so it’s always going to be good to have someone that’s on the same comparison level as you go up the ranks.”

While many of his peers aspire to climb the ranks towards F1 in the long run, Ingram Hill said he hopes to compete in endurance racing in the World Endurance Championship or the IMSA SportsCar Championship. For now, though, Ingram Hill said it was too early to set performance targets with only a few days in single-seaters.

Ingram Hill finished 12th fastest on both days of GB4’s Oulton Park test in March, 12th and sixth on the two media days at Donington Park, and 16th and 10th on the two days of the final official test this week at Silverstone.

At the season opener next weekend in Donington Park, the championship is set to boast its largest grid to date, with 20 drivers already announced and up to eight more seats available to be filled. Last season’s highest single-round attendance was 16 drivers in the second round at Silverstone.

Header photo credit: Jakob Ebrey