Adam Morgan glad to put tough Oulton Park behind him

Adam Morgan was glad to leave Oulton Park after a difficult weekend saw the Ciceley Racing driver relinquish his lead in the Independents’ Championship to Motorbase Performance’s Andrew Jordan.

Morgan was on the back foot from the first session, battling an issue with front-end grip all weekend, only managing to set the 27th fastest time in qualifying.

“It’s been a bit of a struggle all weekend,” Morgan told TouringCarTimes. “From the first lap of FP1 until the final lap it’s been tough. It’s been a bit of damage limitation, but to come away with a 12th and a 10th in the final two races hasn’t been too bad. The car’s been… I don’t know, it’s hard to describe it. Weird. Just weird. It’s been a difficult weekend so we’ve tried many different setups to try and dial it in and we got there or there abouts at the end, but still not quite right.”

The yellow and black Mercedes-Benz A-Class was one of the class acts at the previous round at Thruxton, enjoying an incredibly strong weekend and carrying a six point lead in to Oulton Park, but could only manage 24th in race one, before moving up to 12th in race two and salvaging a top ten result in race three.

“We’ve all been sat here scratching our heads and looking at data wondering how we can go from Thruxton and being absolutely on it and then being 1.3 seconds off in qualifying,” said Morgan. “It’s annoying really, we just couldn’t put our finger on it so we’ve got lots to look at and work on when we get back to the workshop.

“[Oulton Park] isn’t the easiest place to play catchup, it’s extremely difficult to overtake. Race one was a bit of a disaster, the car was no good at all. Race two was an improvement and we went from 24th to 12th which isn’t bad at all really. Race three again, we were there abouts but it was even more difficult to overtake being in the pack. We were relatively happy.”

Morgan now goes in to the next round at Croft in second in the Independents standings and fifth in the overall standings, 14 points off new Independents’ leader Andrew Jordan, but the Blackburn-based driver is confident he can get back to business around the North Yorkshire circuit.

“I’ve always said I like Croft,” he said. “I’ve got to go in with my head full of confidence knowing the lads can do it. The car’s quick, we’re still P5 in the championship, which I thought we’d be in P8 or 9, so there’s loads to play for. Get there and hopefully have the car working straight from the off and have another Thruxton.”