Oulton Park Gold Cup 2009

James Cottingham attended this year’s Gold Cup meeting to compete in the Guards Trophy with DK's Chevron B8. James qualified the car 2nd on the grid alongside the local man Guy Minshaw. At the start of the race an excellent first lap by Al Flemming (his first time out in his newly acquired B8) put him in the lead until running wide at Druids and glancing the gravel set him back a few places. James settled into a comfortable 2nd place following Guy Minshaw and exchanging places with James Schryver a couple of times. Following a failure on the Minshaw car James was upgraded to first position where he remained pulling out a comfortable lead until a torrential downpour came at which point he pitted for his compulsory stop at roughly the half way point. James was in a comfortable position when he rejoined and was set up to retake the lead once all other cars had stopped. However, a few cars being stopped in dangerous positions caused the release of the safety car. A few cars had not pitted by this point meaning they were able to do so during the period thus unfortunately meaning James was "leap frogged"! Once the safety car was withdrawn James drove very well in the terrible conditions lapping consistently faster than any other car in the appalling conditions. Unfortunately James was unable to pull back the advantage gained by some during the safety car and managed to finish a pleasing 3rd place overall.