Points Scoring Weekend For Morgan

Bridgend racer Alex Morgan is still in the hunt for the 2013 Renault UK Clio Cup championship title after narrowing the gap to the lead with two points scoring finishes at the latest rounds this weekend at Croft, North Yorkshire. Alex finished eighth in both rounds 9 and 10 and leaves Croft third in the championship with six races to go. After heading into the weekend second in the championship, 22 points behind Paul Rivett, Alex qualified his Team Pyro car in ninth for race 1, setting a lap eight tenths off the pole time in another competitive Clio Cup qualifying session. His second fastest lap secured him a fourth row spot from eighth for lap two. Beginning from ninth in Saturday’s race, Alex initially fell to 12th after a difficult start. The race was red flagged after three laps following a heavy accident involving Devon Modell, but when the race restarted Alex was able to gain some traction, climbing four places in the remaining seven laps to cross the line in eighth. In Sunday’s race, despite getting a good start, Alex could only manage to finish in seventh place but scored more valuable points for the championship. Morgan said:

The weekend turned out to be a frustrating one but there are some positives we can take away from it. We scored more good points and some of our title rivals had equally frustrating results, which has kept us in the title hunt. After qualifying in ninth and eighth I knew it would be difficult to make a significant place gain in both races, but knew I had to get two points scoring positions. In the first race I had a difficult start and dropped down the order leaving myself with a lot of work to do. Despite this I managed to fight my way back to eighth and salvage some good points. In the second race my start was a lot better but I ended up in an unfortunate position on track through the tight first complex which compromised my progress. When things settled down I managed to get back into 8th place but was too far from the pack ahead to gain any more places. Everyone has these types of weekends and it will be important for me to bounce back like I did at Oulton Park. I'm already looking ahead to Snetterton and I look forward to returning to the place where I took my first single seater win in BARC Formula Renault on my debut.

Leaving Croft, Josh Files leads the championship on 235 points, Paul Rivett is in second on 232 and Alex is third on 215 points, 20 points behind the championship leader. The next two races take place at Snetteron on 3-4 August.