IMSA GTP ERA TWR JAGUAR XJR-14

Original footage of TWR Jaguar XJR-14 shot @ Portland International RACEWAY in 1992. Davy Jones is the pilot for this race.

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• IMSA
• GTP
• 1992
• GroupC
• TWR
• JaguarXJR14
• autoracing
• sportscar
• xjr
• Davy
• Jones
• vintage

[SpencerWhiteSTFC1]

This car was Ross Brawn's first big break. He wanted to make a sportscar in a way that had never been done before.

I loved the fact that it set lap times faster than the Champ cars. In Europe it would have been half way up a Formula 1 grid. The last time Prototype cars got anywhere near the lap times of open wheelers. Awesome.

[pitrow66]

@SpencerWhiteSTFC1

agreed

I have been lucky to go thru the CAN-AM, and GTP , and ALMS years.

[bulletburposmiley]

Was 1992 the first year the GTP cars used the festival chicane at Portland?

[pitrow66]

@bulletburposmiley

Gosh I CAN'T REMEMBER.

I do remember that the GTP's were faster than the Indy cars that year.

[ngendro]

Amazing material. what a nice sound!

[pitrow66]

@ngendro

thanks

Just bought myself a Digital ecoder so I can finally digitize the original Beta footage uncompressed.

Looks awesome, almost like HD , but not quite the same size.

[LorenzoLarriva]

Out of aerodynamic interest, you can see that the 'nose' is actually a wing, behind which is a big flap, angled at about 70deg to the horizontal (see 8:28). You'd normally expect a flap at this angle to be stalled, but here, the true nose, about 5" behind the flap, acts as a the rear face of a duct forcing the air flow up and over the car, so the flap should still work at this extreme angle without stalling - Clever eh! BTW, am I correct in saying that a young Ross Brawn designed this car?

[fernherfnel]

Got to see the XJR-14 at Road America in '92, but only in qualifying. I think Jones wrecked it during warm-up the morning of the race (sad day). I remember 1992 was the year the long-standing course record of the Penske Porsche 917-30 Can Am was finally broken, and it was done by the GTPs. They were lapping quicker than the Indy cars.

[400SA]

Tremendously fast, as you'd expect from what is essentially a slightly detuned F1 car with an aerodynamic body. But not quite up to the task of being beat on for 24 hours (a fully tuned F1 car couldn't even be considered for such a feat!!). Too bad they didn't have more time to adapt these to endurance racing before the plug was pulled, although I must say I prefer the turbo or giant V-12 era, they were certainly more suited to endurance racing..

[g00sampson]

@pitrow66 : I missed Can-Am (born in '77) but my dad used to do timing and scoring at Watkins Glen for F1, Can-Am and other series. I was fortunate to be around GTP, Group-C, IMSA, Sportscar and now ALMS at Lime Rock, The Glen and Portland. Thanks for the great post! Have you seen the new LMP designs for 2011? Glorious.

[g00sampson]

@SpencerWhiteSTFC1 : Great comment! Also interesting to note that the XJR-14 chassis had it's roof chopped and won Le Mans twice running as the Porsche WSC95. Such a glorious design it outlived others of its time and went on to some great achievements.

[GTfour01]

Fantastic footage. You were actually there... The enormous width of them front tires,the way that XJR-14 accelerates out of the pits...

I envy you ;-)

[bluemoon95]

The amazing thing about the Jaguar how they change direction and corner. Those are great memories because I used to watch the Camel GTP races on tv when I was young.

[TheBladeofaDemon]

@pitrow66 they were also faster than F1 cars at the time as well, thank FIA for killing one of the best racing series. Imagine what it would of been like today