WIX Racing’s Adam Morgan was pleased with his qualifying effort for the first British Touring Car Championship race of the weekend at Croft, despite feeling that he could have qualified further up the grid.
Morgan had been on the pace throughout the weekend having finished both of Saturday’s practice sessions in third place, and went into the session confident of breaking into the top ten.
And the 25-year-old maintained his form throughout the half-hour session as he qualified his Mercedes A-Class in eighth on the grid, eight tenths-of-a-second away from Colin Turkington’s ultimate pace but less than half-a-second away from Jason Plato in second.
The result could have been even better for Morgan as he was forced to abort his fastest lap due to a red flag, but speaking to TouringCars.Net, the Lancastrian was still happy with his performance as he secured his best qualifying result of the campaign, placing in the top ten for the second time in 2014.
“I’m really happy with P8,” said Morgan. “We set out to be inside the top ten so we achieved our goal.
“It’s just really unfortunate that on the one lap [that] I was absolutely flying the red flags came out and theoretically we could have been third.
“The car’s got the pace so I’m looking forward to it [racing].”
After the disappointment of Oulton Park three weeks ago where he failed to score a point, Morgan was also pleased with the progress that his team have made to their machine, which bore clear results in the session.
“We had a bit of a nightmare at Oulton – to come away with no points was a complete disaster to be honest.
“But we’ve made some big development work to the front of the car over the break and we’ve done a few things set-up wise and we keep making little steps forward.
“A bit more development and a bit more testing and hopefully we’ll be getting some podiums.”
With rain threatening to affect parts of the race day, Morgan steered clear of any clear predictions, but remained confident that he would be able to compete with the front-running cars.
“I’ll be giving it a go,” said Morgan, when asked if a rostrum was a possibility this weekend. “It’s tough; we don’t know what the weather is going to do but if we can get a good start and get in at the front with everyone and hopefully try and pick a couple off.”