Morgan cruises to race one Rockingham win

Mac Tools Racing's Adam Morgan has cruised to his third British Touring Car Championship victory of 2018 after converting his maiden pole into the race one win at Rockingham.

The Mercedes A-Class driver led every lap of what proved to be a tricky opening race in changeable conditions from pole position to eventually take the win by over three-seconds ahead of defending champion Ashley Sutton.

Although Morgan managed to scamper away into the distance at the front of the field, a ferocious battle ensued for the second step on the rostrum, which caused drama as early as lap one.

Having started on the front row, Sam Tordoff's race immediately unravelled when his Motorbase Performance Ford Focus RS was tilted into a spin after receiving contact from the Honda of Dan Cammish at Deene hairpin.

Chaos ensued thereafter, as Tordoff's stricken Ford created a bottleneck as the remainder of the field negotiated the hairpin. Tom Chilton and Ashley Sutton proved to be the main beneficiaries of the incident with the reigning champion rising from 10th to fourth, while Chilton slotted into second ahead of Cammish.

After a brief safety car phase, Morgan led the way once again as Sutton quickly muscled his into third ahead of Cammish, and set about heaping pressure on Chilton's Focus.

Despite coming under a severe degree of pressure, Chilton was firm in his defence of second and held the position for the majority of the race. But Sutton finally broke through Chilton's resistance with a bold move at Tarzan hairpin on the 13th lap of the race.

By that time, Morgan was already too far up the road for Sutton challenge, resulting in the Mercedes A-Class cruising across the line with a handsome margin ahead of the leading Subaru runner.

Chilton retained his spot on the podium in third, while BTC Norlin Racing's Chris Smiley snatched fourth on the line by 0.059s ahead of Cammish in fifth.

Mike Bushell took sixth aboard his Team HARD prepared Volkswagen CC, ahead of Team BMW's Colin Turkington who regained the BTCC points lead in seventh, thanks to the last lap retirement of Tom Ingram.

Ingram's retirement promoted Turkington into seventh, while Aiden Moffat, Rory Butcher and Matt Simpson also benefited from the Toyota's demise to complete the remainder of the top-ten.