WEC - James Cottingham (McLaren / United) : "it's a dream come true"

After classic racing and British GT, here you are in WEC. What made you take the plunge?

I've got 20 years under my belt of historic racing. But the last three years, I went into GT3 doing British GT, the 24 Hours of Spa last year, and a few other choice events over the last couple of years. But as a kid, it was always a dream to do Le Mans.

There are a lot of bronze drivers out there like me, professionals with a day job that dream of going and doing the ultimate series. Having an opportunity to be part of the World Endurance Championship and to drive for a team like United Autosports is amazing. And with a brand like McLaren, it's just a dream come true. It's not something I expected to happen so quickly. But the opportunity was there at the end of last year. I just started to jump in with both feet and, yeah, really excited to be doing this.

Is it fair to say that the switch from LMGTE to LMGT3 speeded up the transition?

It makes it easier to make that last step quicker. With British GT, GT World Challenge, Spa 24, and all the other things that you can do, you can get so much more seat time in a GT3 car quickly. And now I just have to transfer that to WEC, wich is a bigger paddock, wich it's much more serious. And there are new rules to take on board. But it won't be about relearning the car.

So it was a bit like the ideal year?

I had to take the opportunity. I have a very busy life, with two very young children, building a house and a big business with 50 people working for me to run at the same time. But I feel like this is the year to do it. Next year, there's going to be so many more bronzes.

Strangely, it did feel like this year people wanted to wait and see what was happening. So, I think the few of us that have made the big jump all agreed that this year there's potentially a little bit more opportunity to have a go, and shine hopefully. But yeah, it definitely makes it a lot easier to make that final step. That said, I think with my historic race car experience and lack of ABS, I feel like I could have had a good crack at GTE. But I never had the opportunity.

During the off-season, you tested other cars, including the Lexus RC F GT3. What tipped the balance in favour of United Autosports?

Overall, I'm super happy to be with a team that has had so much success at Le Mans. And being in the World Endurance Championship, racing for a British brand and a British team is quite important to me in terms of some of the people that I've worked with before, with some familiar faces already. Obviously with my sort of corporate heritage, some people would assume that I would go down the route of a Ferrari, but I haven't done that to date. And, you know, at this stage, the McLaren seems to be the strongest package, especially with United Autosports running it.

How do you approach that challenge ?

Unfortunately we were at Dubai these last two days and the weather did not allow us to work properly. So I flew back overnight (tuesday night) to the office this morning. So, we particularly focussed on driver changes, procedures, sequences, talking through the rules, all that sort of stuff which is often the bits and pieces that get sort of left to the last minute and, glossed over quite quickly when you're at the track. There's always some sort of incident or drama or mechanical failure that needs attention. That means we don't have time to talk about those things or practice those things. So, in some ways it's been quite useful for us to have these sort of last two days together to go through all of that stuff that normally you wouldn't get.

And you can rely on your teammates...

I've got a couple of teammates that aren't terribly used to doing driver changes. Actually, weirdly, as the gentleman in the team, I've done a lot of endurance racing, especially with my historic background. So, it's been quite good for me to sort of do my bit already this season, leading the way with what we should do. Just come off the back of doing Asian Le Mans Series as well.

But certainly the guys that I'm with are very focussed on what they've got to do and they're coming to it with their eyes wide open. They are fully aware of their newness to this discipline of endurance racing. But, I've full confidence in their speed. So I think that we'll be able to build on that. And they're definitely very calm and high level team-mates, I've discovered that already.

In LMGT3, the Bronze driver is in charge of qualifying. Do you like it?

I'm really looking forward to it. I've already had three weekends of experience with Asian Le Mans Series and almost in British GT as well with 50 minute qualifying sessions. So I'm quite used to it and actually I'm really looking forward to it. And watching it (Hyperpole) last year at Le Mans was great.

It's going to be really exciting to see the way the team build towards that qualifying session in the free practice sessions, sort of focusing on that side of the team. So I think it's a very good way to encompass every single driver in the team.

Especially as LMGT3 will benefit from greater visibility, as there has only been one GT category since last year...

As someone who watched the WEC, I think it's great that it's reduced to one class now. So we don't have like these GTE Pro / GTE Am thing. Having every single car being a effectively a Pro/Am car creates this incredibly level playing field that kind of matches the theory behind balance performance with your driver pairings.

So I think it's a really good thing and I think it's a really good way to sort of lean on the strengths of every single driver in the team. And therefore, you know, everybody's input into the race weekend is equally as important, and there won't be any way of sort of glossing over any lack of ability or talent with the weakest driver in the team.