The weekend saw a difficult time for 19-year old James, as he and the support cast reached the half way stage of the Formula Renault UK Championship, held at the ultra-fast Thruxton circuit in Hampshire.



Track conditions turned out to be rather greasy all weekend and, whilst a disappointing qualifying time was set for the first race, James had the car working more to his liking for race two qualifying. With the 13th best lap time on the 32-car grid from the Saturday session, James approached the race on Sunday in a more positive frame of mind. Sadly the day’s events on Saturday were brought to an early end, following the very unfortunate and sad death of one of the Renault Clio cup drivers and a marshal, in an incident during their first race of the weekend.

As expected Sundays’ racing was fast and furious, which was hardly surprising given that the Formula Renault grid of 2004 is comprised of top quality drivers from all over the world. James finished 19th in race one after having made up places from the start, although he was clearly disappointed with the result. “I did not make the best of starts, and I got held up early on by a few drivers (who were) driving very defensively, allowing those cars ahead to get away and making it impossible to catch them,” said James afterwards.



In race two, James got a better start from 13th on the grid gaining two places straight away. Unfortunately there were a number of incidents during the first two laps, which put James back down the field. “Once things settled down,” said James, “I was beginning to make up positions, but then got caught up in someone else’s accident in the complex, which bent the front wishbone and we lost five seconds a lap as the car didn’t want to go round corners. It wasn’t until I got back into the pits at the end of the race when I realised how bad the damage was. It was close to breaking, which could have been very nasty! Although we have scored points this weekend, the result is not what I would have hoped for.”

James now has a few weeks off to re-focus his thoughts and to continue with his fitness-training regime, until the Championship resumes on 24th July at Croft in North Yorkshire. Croft is a circuit that James enjoys and one where he also holds the lap record. “We will be working very hard to gain further sponsors for this year and into next year.“ James said the morning after the Thruxton race. “At present our budget is small compared to all the other drivers and it does make a difference to your competitiveness. I would really be pleased if we could get some support from a Peterborough company to ‘fly the flag’ both locally, and across the country.”