Morgans Out of the Box, onto the Podium

08 April 2003

Two Morgan Aero 8s stormed to historic 2nd and 3rd place podium finishes in the opening round of the British GT Championship at Donington Park yesterday.
 
Competing in the new Cup Class, the Morgans were entered by Richard Thorne Motorsport (RTM) and Keith Ahlers. The front running Porsche, just 0.5 sec per lap quicker than the faster of the two Aero 8s in qualifying, pulled ahead during the first half of the race itself, with Morgan driver Keith Robinson reporting slight brake problems.
 
RTM's second driver, Neil Cunningham took over from opener Keith Robinson after about 25 minutes, and immediately set about attacking the Porsche's lead. He raced past the Porsche, and was pulling back the one lap deficit when the race finished. Not far behind was Keith Ahlers/Rob Wells second Aero 8, which had run a faultless race.
 
Charles Morgan, Managing Director of Morgan Motor Company, was delighted with the historic outcome, "This was a fantastic effort on behalf of both teams, and I must especially mention the Thorne car, which was only completed late on Friday night. This really was a car racing "straight out of the box", so to do so well was a truly remarkable achievement. The new Cup Class is designed to make top level national racing accessible to more private teams, and we proved beyond doubt that it is now possible to race competitively without huge budgets. It was a superb opening to the season, and it bodes well for some very exciting GT racing to come, and hopefully, further Morgans joining the grid.

See series calendar for British GT Championship 2003