Morgan Narrows The Gap At Rockingham

The Renault UK Clio Cup headed to Rockingham in Northamptonshire for its penultimate weekend of racing action in 2013. Bridgend racer Alex Morgan headed into the weekend third in the championship, behind Josh Files and Paul Rivett, with the top seven still mathematically in the chase for the title crown. Qualifying for the weekend’s two races took place on Saturday and it proved a challenging session for Morgan and Team Pyro. With the track drying throughout the session, the team elected to stick with wet tyres to their detriment and unfortunately Morgan had to settle for 13th position for the first race on Saturday afternoon. For Sunday’s race he secured himself a fifth row grid slot in tenth. Saturday saw the title battle take an interesting turn with Paul Rivett’s retirement after an early race incident. Deftly avoiding second corner chaos, Morgan was able to scythe his way through the pack to make his way up to sixth. A four-way battle involving Morgan in the middle of the race saw him able to gain another position and he crossed the finish line after 16 laps in fifth. After a strong start in Sunday’s 15-lap race, Morgan had moved up to sixth position in the opening part of the first lap, but was then nudged into a spin later on in the lap by his teammate, which caused him to drop to 18th. Despite sustaining heavy damage to the rear of his car, he immediately set about salvaging his race and had made it back up into the top ten by lap 5. As the race progressed he got as high as 7th but lost a position on the last lap, and took the chequered flag in 8th. Alex said about the weekend:

After a very difficult qualifying session and only managing 13th and 10th as starting places for the race, I am all in all quite happy to have come away with some more solid points and close the gap to second in the championship. Unfortunately in the second race I should have been looking for a podium but was tagged by my teammate early on and had to fight my way back into the points. I'm already looking forward to Brands and want to end the championship on a high.

The season finale, which will comprise two races, will take place on 12-13 October on the Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit. Heading into the finale, Josh Files leads the championship on 356 points, Paul Rivett is second on 304 points whilst Morgan has closed in on Rivett and is now just 15 points behind in third.