Group 44 Jaguar XJR-5 at Watkins Glen

The 962 which I wrote about yesterday was not the only GTP machine at the event, but it was the only one which took to the track. The first GTP which I laid eyes upon, and made a mad-dash to go check out, was this Group 44 Jaguar XJR-5. This rather fascinating beast was beyond immaculate, and it was quite obvious this car spends it's time being pampered rather than spanked on a race track.


I'm a little torn about that fact, as I mentioned yesterday, I prefer a car on the track as opposed to the garage, and it seems a shame for this american-built chassis with its V12 British heart to not be put to good use. That said, if I owned a Le Mans class-winning car I might not be too eager to write it off just trying to have some fun. This car, running the #04 (all the Group 44 machines ran with 40, 44 or 04) was actually chassis number 008, out of ten total built. I'd like to say that if I ran a race team, all my cars would be 05 or 55, so any sponsors who want to get on board should get used to it. Just saying.


Group 44 was an American team headed up by Bob Tullius, a man passionate about his British sports cars, and who was almost single-handedly responsible for bringing Jaguar back to Le Mans, and sports car racing in general. It's a fascinating story, and one well worth reading about. check it out on Ultimate Car Page.

So as the story goes, I happened to be wasting time on GrandTouringPrototype.com earlier, and was very pleased to see they had the video from the Daytona 3 hour Finale of 1986 posted up. It was complete and random chance that I noticed this, and it just so happens this race was the final win for Bob Tullius and the Group 44 Jaguar. So set aside some time, sit back and enjoy some great racing. I couldn't figure out if chassis 008 was being raced at Daytona, but it doesn't really matter...just listen to that engine screaming around the banks and don't worry about anything else. Larger pics over at the WRS Flickr Page.

_WRS

GTP: 1986 Daytona Finale IMSA GTP Race Broadcast pt1 from GrandTouringPrototype.com on Vimeo.

GTP: 1986 Daytona Finale IMSA GTP Race Broadcast pt2 from GrandTouringPrototype.com on Vimeo.