Ciceley Motorsport’s Adam Morgan suffered a disappointing weekend at Oulton Park, in the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship as his MAC Tools-sponsored Mercedes-Benz A-Class was side-lined after race one with a fire caused by a split fuel line.
Adam’s weekend started well with second fastest time in the morning’s free practice session, a real boost to the team, which lost its way on set-up at the Cheshire venue the season before. With confidence up, Adam ran in the wet free practice session but his hopes of a good grid position in qualifying were stymied by a combination of factors: first, the car’s balance wasn’t quite as good as it had been in the morning and a frustrated Adam admitted to over-driving his WIX Filters-supported car. A slow puncture then compromised Adam’s chances as did being caught in traffic when he finally had a chance to improve his lap time. Then, to cap a tough session, Adam had his best lap time removed as it was adjudged to have been set under a yellow flag which forces drivers to slow down.
That left Adam 20th on the grid and he was in attaching mood as the lights went out for the opening race, but on a narrow circuit, keeping out of trouble was important. After three corners, Adam’s weekend was knocked once again as a pack of cars all concertinaed at the Hairpin and one was knocked across the front of Adam’s Fuchs Lubricants backed Mercedes. He was forced off the road and lost places as he recovered, the car suffering geometry damage and then more drama came late race when a slow puncture compromised his pace once more.
That meant that Adam would start race two from 28th on the grid, but when it is not your day, it’s not your day…. As the cars left the line on the pre-race warming-up lap, Adam’s Mercedes erupted in flames. A fuel line had split and with a tank full of fuel, Adam needed the help of the volunteer marshals to extinguish the blaze.
“I saw the smoke first,” explained Adam. “I left the line, pulled third gear and then it just erupted. I stopped as soon as I could and tried to get out as fast as I was able. It certainly wasn’t a nice experience. There is just something about this place…. It’s our home track, we always work so hard here and yet something always hits us. It has been a very difficult weekend but we will regroup and come back fighting at Croft next month.”
The damage meant poor Adam missed both the second and third races and hence has dropped back in the title race, the Morganator now eighth in the standings overall and third in the Independent Drivers’ championship. Ciceley Motorsport is now third in the Independent teams’ championship.
Ciceley Motorsport’s Commercial and Marketing Director Norman Burgess said: “We all feel down after the weekend, nobody more so than Adam who wanted to do a good job for all of our MAC Tools guests who had come to support him at our home race. Oulton Park is a great circuit but it doesn’t seem to like us and we have to pick ourselves up and look forward to Croft next and get our confidence back up. We can take positives out of the weekend, though, because most importantly we seem to have over come the balance and set-up issue we had at Oulton Park last season and that affected us at Croft last year as well, so we go to North Yorkshire in more buoyant mood.
“As a team, everyone worked so hard to achieve a good result this weekend and we’re so proud to have such a great bunch of guys who did everything they could to get Adam back out for the third race.”
“Adam was as normal outstanding and professional, he still attended at his question and answer session, although he was cheesed off he still wanted to thank over 100 guests for attending and spent almost an hour in the hospitality suite posing for photographs and laughing and joking with our VIP’s”
“We will bounce back and I know that Adam wants the next memory of him to be in a blaze of glory.”
