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.”