Adam Morgan says his return to the winner’s circle and strong form at Rockingham is “exactly what we needed” as he looks to mount a renewed British Touring Car Championship title bid.
He scored his maiden pole position in the category after a late effort to deny Sam Tordoff, before converting it faultlessly into a lights-to-flag victory in the opening contest.
The Mercedes A-Class responded well to 66 kilograms of success ballast and enabled Morgan to hold on for second behind a charging Ash Sutton in the middle contest, before weathering changeable conditions to eighth in the reverse-grid finale.
“It’s been a really strong weekend for us, which was exactly what we needed after a poor Snetterton,” Morgan told TouringCars.net.
“It started off really well; pole position and then a lights-to-flag victory – you can’t really ask for much more than that. Carrying 75 kilos into race two, you’re expecting it to be really tough and it’s no easy task carrying that amount of weight and trying to look after the tyres on quite an abrasive track.
“Luck was on our side, we managed to break away from the pack and then just get ahead of Ingram before he caught me up in the second race. Then to Race 3, with 66 kilograms on board and the hard tyre.
“We, unfortunately, have got some testing to do on the hard tyre, we seem to struggle on pace, the car seems to develop huge amounts of under steer when we put them on.
“But to come back in eighth, I’m quite happy with that. It’s another points haul, the car is in one piece, it moves us up the championship order, we’re in P6 so we’re not carrying huge amounts of weight for Knockhill.
“It’s a difficult track to carry weight on, with so many up and down hills and heavy braking, so that should help us and we should carry that weight okay and qualifying quite well, so we’ll give it a go.”
The championship reconvenes at Knockhill over the weekend of 25-26 August.