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James Cole pleased with progress after brace of top tens at Silverstone

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James Cole was pleased with his day’s work at Silverstone, which included his best ever result in the BTCC and a tangle with Team BMR’s Jason Plato in race three.

The Motorbase Performance driver struggled with qualifying, only able to set the 19th best time while team-mate Mat Jackson smashed the lap record to take pole position. While only able to gain two positions in the first race, Cole set the seventh best race lap, meaning he would start race two ten places ahead of his finishing position from race one.

Cole battled through race two, holding on to keep tenth place and gaining the reverse grid pole position, but was unable to keep his position at the top for long. Rob Collard, Colin Turkington and Sam Tordoff made their way past the Ford Focus in the early stages of the race, dropping Cole down to fourth before the Safety Car was brought out for an incident further down the field.

After some defensive moves were able to keep two-time Jason Plato at bay, a tap from the Volkswagen CC allowed Plato to slide past Cole, costing the Motorbase driver a number of places, having to settle for ninth at the finish line. Plato was later given a verbal warning for the incident.

“It was nothing I’ve experienced before,” Cole told TouringCarTimes. “It’s a shame we couldn’t turn it into a result, but that’s BTCC racing really, isn’t it? Jason Plato did a move I thought was uncalled for but I’ll let the stewards see what they want to do about that. Up until that we were having a good race.

“My aim before the race was top five and I think we had the capability to do that, but we move forward, it’s nice after yesterday’s crap qualifying of 19th to have two top tens. Keep progressing and moving forward.”

There had been some comments at Silverstone that the Motorbase package was so successful – Mat Jackson set the fastest lap in five of the six sessions across the weekend – due to a more powerful engine than that of their rivals, but Cole was quick to defend the Mountune power unit, and take the opportunity to praise the Motorbase engineers for their work on setting up what he calls a “fantastic car”.

“It is quick in a straight line,” said Cole. “Is it much quicker than everyone else? No. You can watch the races back and you can see we don’t take the mick, our engine is strong but is not that much stronger than everyone else’s. We don’t take the piss because you can’t in this championship. It helps us, but the car is also fantastic, our engineers have done a fantastic job to do that, Mat has showed that more than me but that’s just experience. Every time I get in this car I go quicker, get the best results I’ve had and if we can carry that on to Brands then great.”

With the season drawing to a close and attention being turned to drives for 2016, Cole admits that there are no plans set in stone for next season, but will be hoping to continue his partnership with Motorbase into next year after the team’s highly successful second half of the season.

“Nothing concrete but I know where I want to be,” hinted Cole. “Hopefully I can have some stable platform, stay here and see what we can do next year.”