Adam Morgan says he is ‘over the moon’ after leaving a British Touring Car Championship meeting as the standings leader for the first time in his career last weekend at Thruxton.
The Ciceley Motorsport racer wrested the lead from Power Maxed Racing’s Josh Cook courtesy of victory in the reverse-grid race at the end of Sunday, and heads to the next event at Oulton Park with a single point advantage at the top of the table.
Morgan also holds a five point advantage over Speedworks’ Tom Ingram in the Independent Drivers’ stakes.
He admitted carrying the full quota of 75 kilograms of success ballast on board the Mercedes A-Class at the 2.2 mile Cheshire circuit – at which Morgan has a solitary podium finish back in 2013 – will hamper his progress, but the joy of leading the championship for now outweighs that negative.
“I’m over the moon and it’s nice to leave as the championship leader, I’ve never had that before and I’m really happy with it.” said Morgan to TouringCars.net.
“It is [a little bit annoying], but I’m championship leader. It is going to be difficult, it’s a track that hasn’t favoured us in the past, but we’re going to turn it around this year, we’ll lug the weight around for qualifying and race one, then hopefully get rid of it.
“The car’s handling really well, so there’s no reason why we can’t get back into the points and come away with some good scores.”
He also paid tribute to Vauxhall driver Senna Proctor for keeping him earnest during the final race, and to his team for optimising the tyre setup in searing temperatures.
“I was saying to myself right from the very start, ‘get off the line, make a good start and then just pull away’, and it all came true. Senna [Proctor] kept me honest the entire race so I had to push like mad to keep him at bay,” explained Morgan.
“It has been hard, and the heat around here, especially on this track is difficult. We were good in the opening race, even with the weight on, race two when it was at its hottest we just struggled, when we came in our tyres were massively over-temperature.
“So we took that into account for race three, and I think we got it bang on, so a big thank you to Ciceley Motorsport for getting the car into that sweet spot.”
The championship reconvenes at Oulton Park over the weekend of 09-10 June.