| JAMES
IS CROWNED FORMULA FORD'S YOUNG KING COLE
3 October, 2009:
Having led the MSA Formula Ford Championship of Great Britain all
season, 21-year-old James Cole secured the championship title
today at the final meeting of the season at Castle Combe.
A fourth-place
finish in the first of the day's races was sufficient for
Southport-based Cole to lift the crown beyond the reach of his
season-long rival Josef Newgarden. Even if the young American wins
his appeal against exclusion on a technicality from last month's
22nd round of the championship, he cannot surpass Cole's points
tally.
James is the fifth
successive Jamun Racing Mygale driver to win the Formula Ford
national title and he hopes to follow 2008 Formula Ford champion
Wayne Boyd into the Cooper Tires British Formula 3 International
Series.
James Cole: a
worthy fifth champion for Jamun
James Cole, the newly crowned MSA Formula Ford Champion of Great
Britain, plans to use his title win as a launchpad into the
prestigious Cooper Tires British Formula 3 International Series in
2010, following in the wheeltracks of the 2008 Formula Ford
titlist Wayne Boyd.
"I am going to
test with a few British F3 teams in the near future," said
James, "and I'm planning a two-year campaign. It will be
great to race with Wayne again and, hopefully, against Josef
Newgarden also. It would be great for Formula Ford if the
championship one and two went into F3… Josef is a very, very
good driver and a very fair driver - I hope he'd say the same
about me."
Reflecting on his
season, which has brought him seven race wins and a further eight
podium finishes, Cole adds: "It's been a long and tough year,
but also enjoyable. I don't think many people at the start of the
year would have expected me to win it. But we've been in front
right from the first qualifying session of the first meeting.
"There's been
a lot of pressure on me to maintain that lead; I've had to push
when I needed to and drive to maintain my lead when that was
required, and that's how I won the championship. I'm very happy
that the championship has been decided on the track and not off
it. The last couple of weeks have been really tough: the view was
that I won the championship at Brands Hatch, but I felt that I
hadn't. We won the championship today, not two weeks ago on a
technicality, and I hope that that's what people remember."
He pays tribute to
his team: "Jamun the last two years have been brilliant. The
car has been awesome, my mechanic Sam brilliant, and I've learned
a lot about how a team is run and a car is set up. Everything I
have learned will help me in F3." |
