A new challenge with Clios for Ciceley Racing’s Adam Morgan
All set to enter his fifth year in the British Touring Car Championship, Adam Morgan is a race winner, established front-runner and challenger for the Independents crown. But a new challenge in a different paddock is coming his way too, with Ciceley Racing expanding into the Renault Clio Cup.
Morgan is responsible for the day-to-day running of the team back at base in Lancashire, and will spend the Fridays of race weekends on Clio duty before concentrating on touring cars for the rest of the weekend.
Three familiar faces from the TOCA paddock will drive Ciceley’s trio of Clios in 2016 – Max Coates, Dan Zelos and Ollie Pidgley, with the first pair of races taking place at Brands Hatch next weekend.
More and more links have been built between BTCC teams and the support paddock in recent years, with Josh Cook’s CookSport team and graduating champion Ashley Sutton’s backing from Team BMR two notable examples. With this in mind, Morgan said the move to Clios felt like a natural progression.
“The more we spoke about it the more we realised it was a logical step. People can grow from Ginetta Juniors to Clios to touring cars, ” said Morgan to TouringCarTimes. “We’ve got three good drivers in the cars and we’re excited about it.
“I do all the running of the team when I’m back at the unit. You name it, I do it – except for the mechanics’ side, I’m crap at that!
“On a race weekend we’ve got a number of staff employed and I’ll be there on the Friday. On the Saturday and Sunday I leave it to them.”
And although his role as a team boss is in its infacy, 27-year-old Morgan already has one eye on a project in the distant future.
“I’m really, really enjoying it. I like learning how to do it and probably one day I might run a team in BTCC when I get too old and crap for it!” he said.
In a busy winter of change for Morgan, a new face is getting used to life in the Ciceley Racing BTCC garage. Marco Calovolo, most recently seen with the Lada Sport World Touring Car Championship squad, has replaced Paul Ridgway as technical director and is engineering Morgan’s Mercedes A-Class.
Calovolo has a wealth of experience garnered in more than 25 years in the touring car business, with Donington Park’s media day test a further opportunity for him to understand the nuances of the NGTC rule set.
“Marco’s CV speaks for itself. He’s been working on all sorts of different cars and is a really switched on, clued up guy. His experience should come through,” said Morgan.
“We ran through quite a few setup changes [in the media day test] because Marco’s never worked with NGTC before, or the new RML components. We’re working together closely, trying all sorts of different variables to give Marco the best collection of data he can use, and hopefully come away with something which is bang on for Brands.
“With the new RML stuff, the first team to find the right setup on it is going to be there or thereabouts. We’ve got some good data for Brands and also for Donington.”
