CICELEY’S GAMBLE THAT PAID OFF
The leading BMW driver in the BTCC standings after Donington isn’t Jake Hill. Neither is it Colin Turkington. It’s actually Ciceley Motorsport’s Adam Morgan, who lies in fifth spot heading into the second round at Brands Hatch.
This was a great weekend for Ciceley pair Morgan and series debutant George Gamble. They qualified fifth and eighth in Gamble’s favour, although Morgan didn’t get a second run because of a high-pressure fuel-pump failure. Morgan, the proud father of new-born twins (to add to the baby born in summer 2020), then delivered 5-4-6 results, despite his hybrid system breaking with five laps to go of the opening race. He had no further use of it for the rest of the day.
But the Ciceley driver on the podium was Gamble, the ex-carrera Cup ace back in racing after a layoff of a couple of years. Third place in race two was a superb effort for his first BTCC outing. “We’ve had a good start to the year definitely,” he grinned. “We’re just building on it really. In testing we were going really well and we put it all together in qualifying.”
It was a great story for a squad whose second car alongside Morgan, son of team boss Russell, has been regarded in some quarters as a Lotus F1-style poisoned chalice. Perhaps now Ciceley has a Ronnie Peterson on its hands instead of a Dave Walker or Satoru Nakajima.
“From the moment he did his first test in the old 1 Series, he’s been on the pace straight away,” pointed out Ciceley engineer Steve Farrell. “Adam always said he wanted a strong team-mate – now you’ve got one mate! And George is such a nice bloke – oh my God, he’s a normal person.”