New colors, new mission for Ian James at Jaguar TCS

New year, new colors. Ian James is a familiar face in the Formula E paddock, but this season he finds himself in a different environment having shed the papaya of McLaren for the black, white, and gold of Jaguar TCS Racing.

James has seen it all, from championship wins with the factory Mercedes squad, to challenging with McLaren as a customer outfit, but Jaguar is different to both – and that was a big draw for him.

“It's been brilliant,” he tells RACER. "One of the most important things is to get an understanding for how much buy-in you've got within the main business, because motorsport, especially in connection with OEMs, can be a fickle business. As we see, OEMs come and go. The one thing I've really noticed, and I noticed it before I decided to join through the initial discussions we had, but the thing’s very much been reinforced over the past three months, the board is hugely supportive of what we do, and you really get the feeling that they've got skin in the game as well, and that makes a world of difference. 

“It means you can plan with confidence. It means that we as a motorsport group can really leverage the opportunities to be brought and get the maximum value from the programs we run, so that's been super helpful.”

One advantage for Jaguar is that Formula E is its top program. Aside from the Defender effort in Rally Raid, parent company JLR does not have any other racing efforts.

“It really structures things in a different way,” James says. “With Mercedes, we were within the motorsport environment, and really constructed within that with an almost, sort of a dotted line into the board, which worked, and it gave us a certain level of autonomy. 

“McLaren is first and foremost a racing organization, so that's a very different beast to here at Jaguar or JLR, and with Jaguar program in particular. I've walked directly into the board; the board feels that they've got skin in the game. They sit in every steering committee meeting that we have, most executive committees and so forth. So the governance is actually done in a way that cements our place within the organization and yet doesn't sort of strangle us with too much of a form of bureaucracy. 

“So you end up with the best of both worlds. It's something that I'm still learning and still sort of going through the motions of but from what I've seen so far, it is different from what I've experienced at Mercedes and McLaren and has positive in the way that it's been structured. So this is working well.

“Both at Mercedes and McLaren, we have to recognize the fact that they have Formula 1 teams, and Formula 1 by its very nature is a bit of a behemoth, and like a bit of a black hole that tends to suck a lot of attention in, quite rightly, because of the scale of the operation. I don't have that challenge at JLR, we've got two programs which aren't competing against each other in any way, shape or form, are incredibly complimentary, actually, and for that reason, I think that fighting for attention, they’re not fighting for attention. That's a positive.”

JLR’s headline motorsport program ties in nicely with Jaguar’s reinvention as an electric-only brand, but while there’s certainly a marketing benefit to racing in the world’s premier electric motorsport series, it has real benefits too. While Mercedes has its electric products which undoubtedly benefitted from the brand’s time in Formula E, McLaren didn’t, while at Jaguar, Formula E plays a pivotal role in the wider company’s future developments.

“The tech transfer, and the authenticity of that, is on a scale that I've not seen before, and that goes beyond just JLR and Jaguar as well,” James says. “That actually extends into the partners that we've got, which, again, is crucially important. 

“So I think that with the reset of the Jaguar brand and the refocus into the BEV future, that's been a brave step to take, that doubt and that strategy in terms of its success, time will tell. But I'm super positive about it, and I think that the motorsport connection and the value that we through Formula E and the program here can cut out into that is significant.”

It's been a challenging start for new arrival da Costra, but James is excited by what the 2019/20 champ can bring to the table. Simon Galloway/Getty Images

But for all the positives Jaguar’s Formula E program can bring, it’s been a – as James puts it – “challenging” start to the season. After five wins from the last six races of 2024-25, hopes were high of a return to form from the season before that when it was on the podium in all bout four races, won both the teams' and manufacturers' championships, and had two drivers in the hunt for their respective title until the final weekend.

The team has started the season with a retirement and 11th place for each of its drivers, Mitch Evans and Antonio Felix da Costa, but James isn't too concerned just yet, saying that there isn't a "fundamental issue" behind the team's lack of results.

“If I sat here and thought we had a fundamental issue that was going to prevent us from turning that around, I'd be very, very nervous right now. I'm not,” he said. “What we've seen through the first couple events is that, fundamentally, the package is very strong. It's performing. We've got two great drivers as well, but the racing gods weren't weren't on our side. 

“Now, some of that was outside of our control, and these things happen. Some of it was within our control, but having seen how the team operates, I've got absolute confidence that any issues that we had, we wouldn't make those same mistakes again, and as long as you're learning from that going forward, then you can have confidence that it'll be okay.”

That confidence that the team can turn things around comes from it having a good foundation when James arrived. Of course, it turned a challenging start to the last campaign into a dominant second half, and despite James having already tasted back-to-back double championship wins with the Silver Arrows in 2020-21 and 2021-22, he wasn't going to come in and fix what wasn't broken.

“I think this team has had a huge amount of success in the past, and especially in the GEN3 era,” he says. “In the teams’ championship, it finished second, first, second. And that is an awesome achievement. So it'd be incredibly arrogant for me to come in and go ‘right, change everything and start from scratch again’. 

“I've used the last three months, obviously I've had the opportunity now to get through two events which haven't been been brilliant, but I think one of the things from the outside, having the Jaguar TCS primary team as a competitor for the last six, seven years, I've seen the strength of the team in terms of their creativity and adaptability. 

“If we can now add into that some procedural rigor, some operational excellence in the way that we execute the events ourselves, then we've got a really positive setup and combination. And that's where the focus lies at the moment.”

One major change that has taken place, though, is in the car alongside Evans, with da Costa arriving at the same time as James to replace Nick Cassidy. After a successful but ultimately trying time at Porsche spent somewhat in Pascal Wehrlein's shadow, he would have hoped for brighter horizons at Jaguar. It hasn't been the case just yet. But that's not to say it can't be the case soon.

“He's a joy to work with,” James says of the 2019-20 champion. “I think he's a really positive influence on the team – voice and energy, but also a level of professionalism, which marks him out as one of the best drivers within the championship. 

“I'd wanted to work with Antonio and Mitch, actually, for a number of years, so to have the opportunity to do so is great. And again, of course, with drivers, they want to be winning, so the fact that they’ve also not scored any points yet is going to be something that they're going to be desperately frustrated about, but at the same time, they're both consummate professionals. They know how to press the reset button. 

“Coming into this weekend, we know that we've just got to keep the focus in place and make sure that we can turn things around going forward. If we fail to do that, then we've got to try and address the issue.”