Adam Morgan led home Plato Racing team-mate Daniel Rowbottom for a 1-2 finish in the opening British Touring Car Championship race at Knockhill, scooping the team’s first outright victory.

Heavy rain arrived at the circuit overnight, continuing through the morning and resulting in a wet start to the race.

Morgan made a strong start to lead into the first corner, as fellow front-row starter Gordon Shedden tried to look to the outside line in his Laser Tools Racing Toyota.

However, Shedden quickly had to turn his attention to defending second from Rowbottom, and on lap three he lost the place to the Mercedes driver, who completed the pass into the first corner at the start of the fourth lap.

By now, Morgan was almost three seconds to the good at the front, although his lead was wiped out by a safety car intervention on lap 17 after Josh Cook knocked Lewis Gilbert into the gravel at Clark curve and the BMW became beached.

After seven laps behind the safety car, racing resumed and Morgan maintained a gap of just under a second to team-mate Rowbottom as the Mercedes duo scored a memorable 1-2 result for the team.

Shedden completed the podium in third, the Scot withstanding pressure from the rapid NAPA Racing UK car of Ash Sutton in fourth.

Sutton was one of the standout performers of the race, clearly revelling in the wet conditions and the fact that his boost deficit was less pronounced in the slippery conditions as his rivals faced fewer opportunities to get their extra power down.

From 11th on the grid, Sutton moved ahead of team-mate Dan Cammish at the start, before getting ahead of Chris Smiley, Tom Ingram and Mikey Doble on the next lap to assume seventh after getting stuck into a close-quarters battle on the run to the hairpin.

By lap ten Sutton was up to fourth having overtaken WSR’s Charles Rainford, with some light contact, and Team VERTU’s Ricky Collard in quick succession.

Whilst his title rival Tom Ingram finished behind on the road, the two were never really in a direct battle; the Team VERTU driver had fallen behind his rival on lap two and despite the safety car intervention couldn’t find a way past the Ford ahead.

Collard was sixth, ahead of the leading Power Maxed Racing Audi of Dexter Patterson in seventh, the Scot having got ahead of team-mate Mikey Doble three laps from the finish.

Doble took eighth, with team-mate Aiden Moffat in ninth, whilst the top ten was completed by NAPA’s Sam Osborne.

NAPA’s Cammish would have been eighth, but for a ten-second time penalty for a false start, dropping him to 18th.

WSR’s Daryl De Leon fell down the order in the closing stages, running in the top ten for much of the race but being elbowed out by Doble on the penultimate lap, ultimately taking the chequered flag in 11th as the best BMW.

His team-mate Rainford had to pit to have a loose rear bumper removed whilst running in sixth, and the BMW driver was later turned around at Clark corner by Toyota’s Ryan Bensley, resulting in him finishing down in 21st.