DRIVERS
Unusually for a GP driver, Derck Warwick started his career in stock car racing, winning the World Championship when only 18. He moved into Formula 3 in 1977, running very well but his choice of a Chevron 838 was not ideal. He swapped to a Ralt RTl later in 1977 and won five of the first six races of 1978 and went on to win the BRDC Vandcrvell title but was overhauled by a young Nelson Piquet in the BARC BP Super Visco title race. He moved into F2 for 1979 but did not have a happy time in Theodore Racing's March 792. His career prospects were reinvigorated by a season with the dominant Toleman TG280 the following year and he remained with the team when they moved into Ft in 1981. He was tremendously patient with the slow and unreliable TolemanHart over the three seasons but after a sparkling end to the 1983 season he leapt at the chance to join Renault for 1984. He would later drive in Fl for Brabham, Arrows, Lotus and Footwork but a GP win eluded him. Warwick frrst drove Walkinshaw's Jaguars in 1986 but at that lime his Fl career took priority. However, after leaving Lotus after 1990, he was able to drive the XJR-14 full-lime in 1991. He joined Peugeot in 1992 and won the Spartscar World Championship with co-driver Yannick Dalmas which opened the door to a return to Fl with Footwork. That would not prove a success and he then spent several years in Touring Cars before retiring.
Youngest son of triple World Champion Jack Brabham, David Brabham was very successful in his native Australia before moving to Britain in 1989 and immediately winning the British F3 title. With the help of large amounts of patriotic sponsorship money, he joined the Brabham F 1 team for 1990 but this was 20 years after Sir Jack had sold the team and the car was no longer competitive. He was then recruited by TWR to race the XJR-14 in 1991. He later achieved considerable success in spartscar racing, winning the All-Japan GT Championship in I 996, Le Mans with Peugeot in 2009 and the top class of the American Le Mans Series in 2009 and 2010.
TOM WALKINSHAW RACING AND JAGUAR
Tom Walkinshaw raced in junior single-seater formulae in the early 1970s, starting with a Lotus 59 in Formula 3 in 1970 and then racing March, GRD, Tui and Modus F2 and 1;3 cars before his single-seater career culminated in a season of 1;5000 in 1975. Walkinshaw's focus then moved to touring cars and he created Tom Walkinshaw Racing (J"WR), initially to run a Ford Capri for himself in the British Saloon Car Championship and then a series of BMWs for himself and other drivers over the next few seasons. I le first teamed up with Jaguar in 1982 to run Jaguar XJSs in the European Touring Car Championship and Walkinshaw and co-driver Hans Heyer won the title for Jaguar in 1984. For 1985, the newly-privatised Jaguar decided to take the Jaguar name hack into sports car racing· and chose TWR to manage the European operation. Tony Southgate designed a successful series of Group C cars using Jaguar's V12 engine, and TWR Jaguar won the World Sportscar Championship in 1987 and 1988, and won the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1988 and 1990.
JAGUAR XJR-14
For 1991, the FIA had announced significant changes to the rules of Group C, limiting the c.ars to 3.5-litre nonturbo engines, the same as the then Formula 1, and lowering the weight limit. TWR responded to designing an entirely new car, unrelated to the Tony Southgate series of Vt2 cars. Ross Brawn moved from the Arrows Fl team, which had enjoyed the most competitive spell of their long history with his cars, to design the new Jaguar. The XJR-14 comprised essentially a Ft monocoque with a fully-enclosed sports car body and was powered by a Jaguar-badged version of Ford's new Cosworth HB VS, at that time available exclusively to Benetton in Fl. One of the noticeable differences from traditional sports cars was the lack of doors, the drivers having to squeeze in through a back window. This proved too difficult for regular driver John Neilsen and the team used only three drivers in the XJR-14s, Derck Warwick and Teo Fabi were lead drivers with Martin Brundle 'floating' between the cars.
Tobacco giant Gallaher International continued their sponsorship of the team and the cars were finished in the two -tone purple livery of the Silk Cut cigarette brand. Three XJR-14s would be built, chassis 591, 691 and 791. The other cars in the 1991 numbering sequence were XJR- 16s for IMSA and XJR-12s for long-distance racing.
SPORTSCAR WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP 1991
Warwick and Hrundle started the season in 591, taking pole position but retiring in Suzuka in April, winning at Mon7.a in May and finishing third at Silverstone. Meanwhile Fabi and Brundlc in 691 also retired in Suzuka, finished second at Monza and won at Silverstone. The XJR14s were then taken to Le Mans but only 691 ran in practice before being withdrawn and 591 was not used. When the World Championship restarted at the Nurhurgring in August, Warwick had a new car, 791, and a new teammate, David Brabham, as Brundlc had fl commitments. Chassis 591 was relegated to the role of team spare. Fabi put 691 on pole at the Nurburgring hut Warwick and Brabham qualified right next to them and Warwick led the team home to another 1-2 fmish.
brought 691 into third with Warwick in 791 two places further back. Mexico was a shambles: the only time Jaguar didn't take 591 as a spare, Fabi had a scavenger pump failure on 691 just before the race and could not start. Warwick lost time in the pits in 791 and Hnished down in sixth. Warwick then needed 591 for the final race, at Autopolis in Japan, where he finished second in front of Fabi third in 691. Despite the rise of Peugeot and Mercedes later in the season, Jaguar's dominance of the early races gave them the World Championship, with Fabi taking the drivers' title. The team then stayed over for a round of the Japanese championship a week later, Fabi and Brabham winning comfortably in 691 while Mauro Martini and Jeff KrosnofT, regular Jaguar drivers in Japan, shared 791.
IMSA 1992
Hy the end of 1991, the Jaguar parent company was losing huge amounts of money and only heavy investment from its new owner Ford was keeping it afloat. Cuts were being made and jobs were going, so the expensive race programme could no longer be justified. The World Championship programme was dropped after 1991 but the IMSA programme continued for another year and one of the XJR-14s, chassis 791, was sent stateside in the expectation of winning that championship. Despite the Jaguar being unmodified for IMSA, Davey Jones took pole position at Miami but spun off and was unable to restart. He then dominated the Road Atlanta race: pole position, fastest lap and leading from start to llnish. Disaster struck at the next race where a wheel broke in a downhill section at Lime Rock and the Jaguar ended up in the tyre barrier. "Ibe monocoque suffered severe damage to the front left corner (see page 8) and was sent back to the UK for repairs.
A replacement car, chassis 691 but now renumbered 192, was ready for Mid-Ohio a week later and Jones was again dominant, leading every lap from pole and taking fastest lap as he had at Road Atlanta. However, at the next race, Jean-Manuel Fangio Ill took pole and won comfortably in his AAR Toyota Eagle; Jones set fastest lap before being knocked into the wall by Fangio's teammate and finished fourth. It was becoming clear that the lightweight Jaguars were not suited to the uneven American circuits and Jones would not win again that season as Toyota dominated. TWR ran a second car at Laguna Seca, Arie Luyendijk racing chassis 591. Jones then used this car at Road America in August but had another wheel failure at the Carousel, again with severe damage to the left front. He then returned to his regular car, 691, for the remainder of the season. That was the end of the road for the XJR programme's and Daytona in January 1993 was the TWR Jaguar team's final race.
THE FATE OF THE CARS
For Tom Walkinshaw Racing, life carried on. The XJR-14 design was offered to customers and a small run of cars were built for Mazda, badged as the Mazda MXR-01, and raced in the 1992 WSC. After that, Walkinshaw approached Porsche with an idea to build a prototype for IMSA's new 'World Sports Car' category which had replaced GTP after 1992. Dubbed lhe WSC-95, the prototype consisted of the sole remaining XJR-14, chassis 691, with the roof removed and Porsche's venerable 3-litre Type 935 turbocharged flat-6 engine installed in place of the Cosworth. Porsche were convinced but IMSA changed the rules of their new category while the car was still in development so Porsche cancelled the project and early in 1996 handed over the unraced prototype to Joest Racing. With some money from Porsche, Joest modified the car for Europe's Le Mans Prototype (LMP l) regulations and built a second car up from an additional monocoque supplied by TWR's ASTEC. Astonishingly,
the WSC-95 won Le Mans in 1996 and the same car, the converted Jaguar, won again in 1997. At this Point Porsche brought the project in-house and modified the two cars, now calling them Porsche LMP1-98s. They competed at Le Mans in 1998 but did not win and the double winning ex-Jaguar was retired to Joest's museum.
While all this had been going on, TWR had bought a one-third stake in the Benetton Fl team and Walkinshaw himself had moved to Benetton as engineering director, taking Ross Brawn with him as technical director. They would have great success with Michael Schumacher winning back-to-back titles in 1994 and 1995 before Schumacher and Brawn moved to 1:crrari. Walkinshaw, however, went in a separate direction, buying the Arrows F 1 team in early 1996. Despite moments or promise, the team floundered and dropped out of FI in mid- 2002. Arrows went into liquidation at the end of 2002, and its failure also brought down its parent company TWR which was placed in receivership in February 2003.
So by mid-2002, as Arrows and TWR were burning through the last of their money, thoughts turned to the old Jaguars as a source of quick cash. The XJR-9 that had won Le Mans in 1988 had been transferred to Jaguar's Heritage Trust so the remaining jewels in the TWR collection were the XJR-12 that had won Le Mans in 1990 and the surviving X JR-14s. Of the original three XJR- I 4s, one was now in a museum in Germany but the other two were at Walkinshaw Ra<-ing's factory having been repaired since their career-ending accidents. The least damaged car, chassis 591, had been completed as a show car by TWR in the US in late 1992 or 1993 and was used by TWR as an exhibition car, notably on display at TWR's Leafield Technical Centre in 1997 and at Goodwood in 2000. It was sold via John Starkey (St Petersburg, FL) to Phil Bennett (Gladstone, NJ) before the axe fell.
THE TWR COLLECTION'S 791
The other car, 79 l , remained in TWR' s collection but the repairs to its monocoque had been substantial and according to the then ASTEC boss Robert Tetrault, would have impacted the structural integrity or the monocoque. Any likely buyer of a XJR-14 would probably want to run it in historic racing so, in 2001, TWR decided to make a completely new monocoque for the car. Tetrault advises that this was completed by ASTEC over 2001 -2002 and the c.1r was built up in 2002, using parts from 791 and also taking over its chassis plate.
In a past.script in Leslie Thurston's book, it is mentioned that 'TWR's entire collection of historic race cars was also placed in administration' and one of the cars listed was 'XJR-14 chassis 791'. Aaron Hsu acquired this car from the administrators but found that it had a brand new monocoque so asked TWR for the original monocoque as well. llsu felt that the history or the car was in that repaired monocoque so decided to have 791 's original monocoque built up again and to transfer the chassis plate '791' back onto it. The new monocoque that TWR had built to carry 79 I 's plate was at this pc>int renamed • X91 '. The rebuild of 791 was performed by Hsu' s regular preparation specialist, Lanzante Motorsport, led by Dean Lan7.ante, son of company founder Paul Lanzante. Hsu had acquired all the drawings and surviving bodywork bucks with the car so most of what Lanzante needed was already on hand. Uprights and suspension came from surviving stock and a gearbox was built up from the available parts. A new Cosworth HB engine was also procured. This allowed the repaired monocoque to be built up as a rolling chassis, at which point the project moved to Retrac Composites Ltd in Swindon, the company of Jonathan 'Wingnut' Greaves, who had run the composites shop for Brabham's Fl team and was an old friend or Paul Lanzante from when they both worked at Tyrrell. Retrac used the surviving tooling where possible and then reverse engimô€‚¦ered the complete 'X9 l' to make the crashbox, siderods and bodywork required to complete the rebuild. Daniel Smith, then a project engineer at Retrac, remembers the work being done in 2010 and 201 I at an otherwise quiet time at Retrac.
While this work was continuing, X91 made its first public appearance in March 2010 at the Press Day for the Goodwood Festival of Speed. It had no chassis plate at this point but by the time it returned for the event in July, it was wearing a copy chassis plate bearing the number 'X91' but with the same date, August 1991, as appeared on the '791' plate. X91 also appeared in the paddock at Brands Hatch during a Historic Group C race later that year but did not participate. The two complete cars were photographed together at Lanzante's workshops in June 2011. The '791' plate was now back on the repaired monocoque and the new monocoque had its new copy chassis plate.
The only other public appearance of either X91 or 791 was at the Portimao drcuit in Portugal in October 2011 when it was on hand for the Algarve Historic Festival. Again, it did not participate in the event. Since they were purchased by Larry Kinch neither car has made any public appearances.
IDENTIFYING THE XJR-14S
When researching racing car identities, the usual problem is a lack of information, with identities having to be pieced together from disparate clues. In the case of the XJR-14s there arc already complete histories, but unfortunately two separate and rival accounts. In early 2003, Leslie F Thurston wrote a book on the TWR Jaguars which he describes as the culmination of a long project and had involved acquiring "mountains of books, racing magazines, press packs, photographs and collections of material from writers and enthusiasts who followed the teams wherever they raced". It would not be feasible to check every detail of Thurston's work but the overall impression given by his book is very good. Thurston is not a professional writer but his career was spent preserving timber in historic buildings and his personal interest in ordnance and ammunition turned into an expertise in WWI firearms and he published the definitive book on this subject in 1972.
Les's approach to the TWR book followed the approach he took on his firearms book. He built up a separate file on each car, using magazine reports and articles to get the basics and then using the Jaguar in-house publication "XJR Review" to confirm them. Les no longer has his copies of "XJR Review" but sparts racing car historian Janos Wimpffen confirms that it was an 'excellent' publication and that it always listed chassis numbers. Les also had the full support of the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust who published his book. One of the revealing aspects of his conversation with the author, who disturbed the 80-ycar-old Les one afternoon in 2014 when he was restoring a Winchester rifle, was that TWR had not co-operated with the book. Les's detailed car-by-car knowledge meant that he knew that when he saw "the Daytona '88 winner" and "the Le Mans '90 winner" alongside each other at a Jaguar meeting, something had to be wrong, as both those races had been won by the same car. After he innocently mentioned this to Tony Dowe, then the head of TWR's US operation, TWR phoned around old drivers and team members telling them not to co-operate any further with Les's book. Despite the lack of TWR co-operation, Thurston's work on this subject has to be taken very seriously. Any alternative history would need to be established with very solid evidence.
The alternative histories became known in 2009 when that same Tony Dowe commented on a forum thread about the XJR-14s. He said that 591 had been the first car to arrive in the US, that 691 had been "destroyed" at Road America and that 791 was the surviving car that then became the Porsche. This new version of events was accepted by Fran'rois-David Lemierre, who has a website dedicated to the XJR-14 and corresponded with Dowe, by Michael J. Fuller, co-author of 'Inside IMSA's Legendary GTP Race Cars' in 2008, and Martin Krejd, webmaster of racingsportscars.com. However, Dowe did not offer any evidence for his revised histories.
When the author started lo investigate the 1992 timeline for this dossier, aspects or Dowe's history did not match with photographic evidence. Firstly, the damage at Lime Rock (top photograph) can be seen to be very severe, with part of the monocoquc torn away and the crashbox clearly broken. This damage matches the photograph supplied by Robert Tetrault of the monocoque at ASTEC (middle photograph) and also matches the repair on Larry Kinch's 791, which would make sense under Thurston's histories but not under Dowc's. Dowe's story was that the car damaged at Lime Rock was 591, now with Bob Berridge and Gareth Evans, but the damage repair to the front left comer of that car is relatively minor. Then pictures emerged of the Road America accident and comparison of these with pictures of the heavily-damaged monocoque, supposedly from Road America, showed important differences. The TWR stickers on the crashbox were in a different position and rather importantly, the Road America wreck can be seen being lifted by its crashbox, a part that had apparently been almost separated from the monocoque. Another photograph taken in the pits al Road America prior to the accident (bottom photograph) clearly shows '591 ' stencilled onto the front of the monocoque.
As more photographs were sourced, it became clear that the heavily-damaged monocoque was from Lime Rock, and that the Road America accident, although it had wrecked the roof or the Jaguar, had done relatively little damage to the monocoque itself. So the lightly damaged car was from Road America and the heavily damaged one was from Lime Rock, not the other way around as Dowe had claimed. So Thurston's chassis histories arc shown to be correct.
These findings have been accepted by Lcmicrre and Fuller, both of whom plan to publish retractions.