Throwback Thursday: TWR Jaguars Took Four Rolex 24 Victories

The late 1980s featured nine manufacturers battling head to head in the IMSA Camel GTP, including Porsche, Nissan, Toyota, Mazda, Chevrolet, Ford, Buick and Pontiac.

Jaguar was at the front of that battle, with its prototypes fielded by Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR) and prepared by Tony Dowe. After running a white, green and red paint scheme with Castrol sponsorship from 1988 through 1990, the team ran a red, white and blue Bud Lite livery in 1991 and 1992.TWR replaced the Bob Tullius’ Group 44 Jaguar factory-backed efforts in 1988, with a driver lineup including Davy Jones, Jan Lammers, John Nielsen, Martin Brundle, Raul Boesel, Eddie Cheever, Johnny Dumfries and Danny Sullivan. The move paid immediate dividends. Brundle, Boesel, Lammers and Nielsen won the Rolex 24 At Daytona in a TWR Jaguar XJR-9, with Cheever, Watson and Dumfries placing third. Niellsen went on to place second in the GTP championship.The Castrol Jaguar – this time carrying the XJR-12 designation – repeated at Daytona in 1990, with Jones and Lammers joined by Andy Wallace. Nielsen, Cobb and Brundle finished second in an XRJ-12. “That XJR-12 that we won with at Daytona was our workhorse,” recalled Jones. “That was a really good car. I still believe to this day that if you took that chassis and if you put all the modern electronics on it, it would be a really good car – and it was really suited for racing at Daytona.”While not overall winners, Bud Lite Jaguars also took a pair of class victories in the Rolex 24. Jones, Scott Pruett, Scott Goodyear and David Brabham were second overall in 1992 in a Jaguar JXR-12, winning the IMSA GTP class while placing behind the winning Nissan Group C car. The following year, Jones, Pruett and Goodyear won the Group C class despite placing 10th overall in the race dominated by Dan Gurney’s All American Racing Toyota Eagle. That was the team’s final race in IMSA competition.Following the 1992 Rolex 24, TWR upgraded to a Jaguar XJR-14, with Jones going on to place second in the GTP championship. His accomplishments that year included an all-time record lap of 150.335 mph on Watkins Glen International’s Short Course (58.335 seconds), in the first year the circuit used the Inner Loop configuration to slow the cars. Jones also won in a solo drive at Road Atlanta.“We had the best of everything in the Bud Lite XJR-14,” Jones said. “It was designed by Ross Brawn, and we shared engines with Benetton (Formula One) that year. The car was phenomenal.”Jones was reunited with the XJR-14 for one final race. Joest Racing fitted an XJR chassis with a Porsche engine for the 1996 24 Hours of Le Mans, with Jones joining Alex Wurz and Manuel Reuter in taking the overall victory. Two weeks earlier, Jones finished second in the Indianapolis 500.Today, Jones remains active with Jaguar, heading up its Performance Driving Academy.“I oversee pretty much everything they do on race tracks,” Jones said. “Anybody that buys an R-model Jaguar can spend a day at a racetrack with us.”