How Morgan soared amid off-track team unrest

Two drivers were purring with satisfaction as the Donington Park paddock turned into the British Truck Grand Prix on Sunday evening. As the truckies performed a convoy to reverse their cabs to hitch up to their teams’ transporters, Adam Morgan, three times a winner (including the qualifying race) over the weekend, basked in what had been the finest event to date of his lengthy British Touring Car Championship career. Ash Sutton didn’t win at all, but could reflect upon a job superbly done of maximising (almost) everything across the weekend.

“I just want to go home, have a few beers, see my kids, and have a bit of a reflection on today, just enjoy it,” mused Morgan who, amid the off-track trauma afflicting the former Plato Racing team, now CPRL, carried on the form from last time out at Knockhill and took a step forward even from that.

“What a day,” fizzed Sutton. “If someone said I’d get two seconds, especially when we were on the hard tyre – that kind of blew my own mind. What a way to keep stretching out the points gap.”

There are just three rounds to go now, with Croft next up, and Sutton holds a gargantuan 98-point advantage in the standings. It’s possible that, in North Yorkshire, he could clinch a title that has not been won before the final weekend since Alain Menu dominated the 1997 season – in the days long before reversed grids, success handicaps and quirky tyre regulations. More likely is that he will become champion for a record-breaking fifth time during the following round at Silverstone. Key to that has been his form in the Alliance Racing-run NAPA Ford Focus Titanium in races where he shouldn’t get good results. His second place in race two at Donington was the perfect illustration of that.

Sutton had converted seventh in qualifying to fourth in the short, half-points race on Saturday afternoon. That was an achievement in itself, given he had access to just one second per lap of TOCA Turbo Boost usage to the 20s of the bulk of the field, including poleman and victor Morgan. With just one lap of TTB in Sunday’s opener, he rose from fourth to second.

That opening race was fought out with the leading runners on medium-compound Goodyear tyres, and its top three – Morgan, Sutton and Gordon Shedden – were compelled by the regulations to use the hard rubber next time out. Here, Morgan and Sutton went on very different paths. While the Lancastrian’s Mercedes A35 Saloon faded to an eventual ninth, Sutton set a fastest lap 0.7s quicker and kept himself in the fight.

Morgan leads at the start of the opener, with two wins set to come his way on Sunday

He didn’t make it difficult when team-mate Dan Cammish – his Focus sporting a retro Valvoline livery for the weekend – came through for victory, the Berkshire-domiciled Yorkshireman on the medium tyres after finishing fourth in the opener. But Sutton was in the thick of a fight with Morgan’s CPRL stablemate Dan Rowbottom and Tom Ingram’s Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai i30 N Fastback for second, before scampering away for a remarkable result once the ‘Rowbo/Tingers’ fight got really serious.

“I wanted to get to the front, I wanted to get clean air,” reasoned Sutton, who led for three laps before Rowbottom and Cammish got past. “We’ve seen multiple times that you don’t want to be the first car on the hard [to be caught and passed], because you tend to get swallowed up; you don’t really want to be the second either. I think that allowed us to do what we did. Obviously we had a little bit of luck – I think Dan [Rowbottom] had an electrical issue which allowed me to get back past him, and him and Tom squabbling in the latter phase of that race allowed me all the breathing space I needed to bring it home in second.”

Interestingly, it’s worth pointing out here that Sutton wasn’t the fastest driver on hard tyres in this race. The Speedworks Motorsport stable of Toyota Corolla GR Sports have come on strong of late, despite their venerable age, and Shedden did eclipse Sutton’s lap time. But the Scottish three-time champion somewhat proved the championship leader’s point. From third on the grid, he was the most vulnerable of those on hard tyres and two separate incidents – one with Rowbottom, one with Aiden Moffat, both of whom were held to be at fault – equated to a lowly 13th in the results.

Sutton seems this season to be immune to such jeopardy. But, for the second race weekend running, things didn’t go his way in the reversed-grid finale and, just as at Knockhill’s race three, he could only muster a few points from this one

Shedden had been part of an eyebrow-raising 1-2-3 for the Speedworks cars in the second qualifying group, between front-row qualifier Josh Cook and Aron Taylor-Smith. And that in itself was a great result for Cook, given he’d missed the bulk of free practice with a sensor-related issue. Even so, once the problem was identified, it provided some degree of relief because it went a long way towards explaining his relatively poor form at Knockhill.

“From my perspective I’m pleased, because we only did one lap on cold tyres in free practice to check M-Sport [engine supplier] had fixed the issue that had happened,” mused the recently peroxided West Countryman. “I’m glad it happened, because we had an issue that was causing problems at Knockhill and weren’t sure what it was, and it was good that it developed and let go in practice.”

With his own TTB deficit, Cook wasn’t going to be able to match the fully-boosted Mercs in the qualifying race, but his gutsy defence of third from Sutton showed that here is another driver at the top of his game. But then the Cook race-one-on-Sunday jinx struck again. He was lying second to Morgan when a shearing in the gear lever mechanism forced him out, described by the team as a “one in a million” slice of ill fortune.

A pair of second places enabled Sutton to grow his points leader to almost three figures

Photo by: JEP

Cook’s old pal Sutton seems this season to be immune to such jeopardy. But, for the second race weekend running, things didn’t go his way in the reversed-grid finale and, just as at Knockhill’s race three, he could only muster a few points from this one. With Ingram eighth on the grid and Sutton ninth, they might have been expected to make some progress through the field despite their limited TTB. That is what Sutton did, displacing Shedden from fifth on the final lap, but he was scuppered after the race by a 5s penalty. A nerf at the Old Hairpin on Ingram on the third tour, as they disputed fifth place with reversed-grid polesitter Chris Smiley, dumped the reigning champion to the bottom of the top 10.

It didn’t appear to be a particularly penalty-worthy offence, but Sutton copped the punishment anyway. Ironically, it slotted him in one place ahead of Ingram in the results – in eighth. “It was the smallest of touches,” claimed Sutton. “Honestly I breathed on the car, a tiny touch, but poor old Tom obviously lost a handful of places.”

For the unfortunate Ingram, it was the mouldy cherry on the top of a very stale cake for the day. He even briefly lost second place to Cammish in the points table, only to slip back in front when the Ford driver plummeted to 15th on the hard tyres in the finale. Ingram’s 3s of TTB equated to the ninth row of the grid for the qualifying race. He stormed through to eighth here, but “only because there were safety cars, and I could make up the deficit because no one else was on boost [on the first lap of each restart]. It just didn’t feel like we had any punch, any performance in it. It just felt… slow.”

Ingram then lost a fight for eighth in the first race to the sister Excelr8 Hyundai of Ricky Collard, but it was in the next race where his plight became clear. Despite being on the beneficial medium rubber, and maximum TTB, he could not pass hard-tyred and boost-hampered Sutton, and only cleared Rowbottom – who reckoned his “engine lost power twice [in race one and two] – we don’t know why” – on the penultimate lap.

All six Hyundais – four Excelr8, two Restart Racing – were lacking form at Donington. We reported earlier in the season that BTCC organiser TOCA’s technical team turned all the series’ engines down one step before the opening round, then switched the Hyundais down another. And it did appear at Donington that Ingram was particularly struggling for straightline speed.

The man himself won’t go down that avenue, perhaps mindful that rivals moaned about the Hyundais being way faster in a straight line in recent seasons. “The car has felt nice – we’ve tweaked it all the way through,” explained Ingram. “Qualifying felt pretty good, but we were a second off. I’ve never been a second off in my life ever. And then I’ve just not had any pace. Really good on the brakes, can smash kerbs, good traction, nice front end, good bit of rotation, but just not able to race.”

A lack of straightline speed really hurt Ingram's hopes

Photo by: JEP

Of his travails in race two, he continued: “I thought I’d played a blinder to be honest. I got to that pack that Ash was in, and I had 10 laps of TTB left – Ash had two and Dan had three. Ash was on a hard tyre, cars ahead were all on a hard tyre. I thought it was going to be like shooting fish in a barrel, but it ended up like trying to push mud uphill – really clayie, wet mud as well. We just weren’t able to do anything. I could get close to Ash, but then I couldn’t use the boost – even on it, I couldn’t attack. Everything I gained by using the boost, I’d lose out of every single corner.”

While Sutton and Ingram were mired in the reversed-grid dogfight, Morgan was home free for another victory, this time from Aiden Moffat’s Power Maxed Racing Audi and the West Surrey Racing BMW of Daryl De Leon, who scorched up the field from 11th on the grid. The Mercedes’ fade on the hard tyre in race two set Morgan up beautifully for the reversed grid – front row, on the medium rubber. “When you’re on this wave things just happen,” he grinned, scarcely believing what is happening in his 15th BTCC season. “They pull out P10 [in the draw] which puts me on the front row, with maximum deployment and on the right tyre. It all just fell into my lap today, which has been perfect.”

August has been a tough month for the team amid its metamorphosis from Plato Racing to CPRL. Yet Morgan, one of the most universally popular guys in the paddock, has done so much to lift spirits

All Morgan had to do was force poleman Smiley to, on the second lap, “brake slightly too late into Old Hairpin, which gave me the switchback. We both deployed up the hill, but it gave me the inside into McLeans, and from there it was right, two or three quali laps, get a gap and then go from there. We maximised it, we didn’t make any mistakes, the car crew have been brilliant all the way through. But – and I forgot to tell Louise [Goodman, in the post-race ITV interview], but I did have a pretty significant misfire, which developed on the second to last lap. At the time I was bricking it. I thought if there was another couple of laps, I wouldn’t have made it to the end. That was a bit nerve-wracking, but we survived, and two wins in one day… what a weekend.”

What a weekend indeed. August has been a tough month for the team, and its metamorphosis from Plato Racing to CPRL will be discussed in a column in the coming days. Yet Morgan, one of the most universally popular guys in the paddock, has done so much to lift spirits. And then, after downing a few beers and spending some time with his kids? He and his father Russell are competing at this weekend’s Oulton Park Gold Cup, Adam in the family Ciceley team’s Lotus Cortina, dad in their Mini.

For someone who reckons he wants to “just try and move past all the noise” surrounding recent events, what better way is there to do that?

Morgan celebrates his best-ever BTCC round

Photo by: JEP