Adam Morgan happy despite losing pole position

Ciceley Racing’s Adam Morgan declared himself happy with fourth on the grid in a dramatic Thruxton qualifying, despite having a pole position time deleted for exceeding track limits.

Morgan was one of several drivers to lose a time after being penalised for cutting the corner at the final chicane, but was able to recover after being dropped to ninth.

The former Ginetta Supercup champion benefitted from the red flag stoppages, as they both came before he had taken any significant life out of his tyres.

Speaking to TouringCarTimes, Morgan said: “It would have been nice to get my first pole. Coming over the start-finish line and going into the first sector, my engineer came on the radio and said ‘amazing, that’s pole, keep pushing’.

“Then at the end of sector two he came back on and said it had been disallowed, and I was back in ninth again. But the car was on rails, and it shows how good it is that I was able to do three laps in the 1.16s and get back up there again.

“I was lucky and unlucky really. On the second set of run tyres I hadn’t done any hot laps – I was just about to start them when the red flags came out. So they had quite a bit of life left in them for that last run.

“We held ourselves back in the pitlane to avoid the traffic and it was a case of finding some fresh air, and me hanging it out!”

Looking ahead, Morgan is hopeful his lighter Mercedes A-Class will help him make forward progress on raceday.

“I think we’ll be pretty good, to be honest. We did a race run in free practice one and managed to do 15 laps, and our pace was strong throughout the whole session,” he said.

“There’s a lot of cars carrying more weight than us, so hopefully their tyres will go off more than mine and we’ll be able to pick them off at the end.”