Adam Morgan insists that he faces no ‘home advantage’ in this weekend’s British Touring Car Championship races at Oulton Park, with the Ciceley driver having struggled at the circuit in recent years.
Morgan ended the first practice session in 17th position after struggling to hook up the Mercedes-Benz A-Class around the Cheshire circuit.
The Lancashire racer, who is based just an hour north of the track, admits that the circuit has not proved to be a favourable one in recent years, despite it being the venue of his first-ever BTCC podium back in 2013.
“Everyone keeps saying it’s your home track, home advantage, but it doesn’t seem to work for us!” said Morgan to TouringCars.Net. “We’re third in the championship, two points off the lead, so there’s a bit more pressure on, but it’s early days yet. The plan for this weekend is to keep the scores coming in and get some top tens, and go from there.”
“It’s a difficult one. For some reason we go to Thruxton and we go really well, but we come to Oulton, our nearest one which I know like the back of my hand, and we don’t seem to get it hooked up for some reason. Whether it’s the car just doesn’t quite suit it I’m not sure, but we’ll give it a go.”
Morgan has only taken one top ten results in the past six races at the circuit, but admits that a longer-term strategy at Oulton Park is unlikely to pay dividends due to the difficulty of passing at the track.
“You try to [play the longer term game], the only problem with that is that around Oulton Park it’s very difficult to overtake,” he continued. “It can be a little bit ‘follow my leader’ sometimes, so qualifying around here is absolutely key.
“With 57 kg on it makes it even more difficult. We need to get to the front, so the lads are all scratching their heads at the minute and we’re going to pull something out of the bag hopefully.
“I think rain [in qualifying] would actually help us. With weight on board it helps with the corner balancing, and it’s still a bit of a handicap, but in the wet it would benefit us more than it does now.”