Jaguar was far from among the favourites when it pitched up at the Daytona 24 Hours in January 1988 with the new XJR-9. Tom Walkinshaw Racing might have just taken over as the British marque's representative in the IMSA GT Championship but it had yet to notch up a result better than fifth in two years over in the other 24-hour over at Le Mans. What's more, the team running its three-car assault in the Florida enduro hadn't even existed four months beforehand.
The hardest race of Martin Brundle’s career – the 1988 Daytona 24 Hours
&width=1600)
Yet the new TWR Inc squad pulled off a surprise victory with Martin Brundle, John Nielsen, Raul Boesel and Jan Lammers ahead of the hordes of Porsches — there were no fewer than eight 962s on the grid — as well as factory entries from Nissan and Chevrolet. It's not the Jaguar 24-hour triumph the world remembers from 1988, but for many of those involved, the sheer hard work involved in the victory ensures that it is forever etched in their memories. Brundle and team manager Tony Dowe, who was also in charge of the Jaguar that would win Le Mans in 1990, are among them.
Brundle describes the Daytona triumph as "the hardest race of my career". The event takes that accolade as a result of the relentless fightback by the veteran of 158 grands prix starts and his team-mates after two early delays. Expat Brit Dowe suggests that the race and the months leading up to it were the toughest of his career.
That's because Jaguar made a late decision to hand TWR its baton in North America after dropping the Group 44 squad that had taken it back to frontline sportscar racing. The problem was that Walkinshaw didn't have a Stateside team, and that meant starting a something from scratch.
That was Dowe's task when he joined TWR on October 1st of 1987 from the Newman-Haas CART single-seater squad. He had 16 weeks to set up the team and get in some all-important pre-season testing.
&width=120&fastscale=false)
The Porsche 962 of Al Holbert, Derek Bell and Chip Robinson pits for fresh rubber and a full tank of fuel in the middle of the night.
The new Jag wasn't the quickest car, though a hot lap from Lammers managed to haul the car in which he was entered with Danny Sullivan and Davy Jones onto the front row. That performance looked like being a false dawn for the new team, however. The trio of XJR-9s hit problems one by one during the race.
It was the car that went on to win that race that ran into trouble first. Boesel damaged the rear body section as early as hour two and then an electrical glitch fried the fuel pump. Then the Lammers/Jones/Sullivan car ran over some debris in the night and damaged the oil radiator, low oil pressure eventually putting it out of the race. The final Jag shared by John Watson, Eddie Cheever and Johnny Dumfries, lost one of its 12 cylinders. It wasn't looking good for TWR Inc.
But it all began to change around breakfast time on Sunday morning. The Al Holbert Racing Porsche, in which team boss Al Holbert Jr, Derek Bell and Chip Robinson had led much of the race, hit a problem with its turbocharger wastegate. The Lammers Jag briefly inherited the lead before the engine finally gave up the ghost, but a series of problems for the Jim Busby Racing Porsche that took over at the front allowed the delayed Jaguar to come back into the picture.
“We drove it flat out all the way,” remembers Brundle. “I remember coming up to a gaggle of cars tripping over themselves on the banking and thinking there was no way I getting out of the throttle. I dived down onto the apron and went past them all. It was pure lunacy.”
&width=120&fastscale=false)
Brundle made a return to the Daytona 24 Hours in 1990, this time at the wheel of the TWR Jaguar XJR-12 (pictured). Brundle, with team-mates Price Cobb and John Neilsen, finished in second position behind the XJR-12 of Jan Lammers, Davy Jones and Andy Wallace.
It was all the more crazy because Brundle and Nielsen were now doing all the driving and were literally out on their feet as the race drew to a close. That explains why Walkinshaw decided to bolster the driver line-up.
“I jumped out of the car, strapped the next guy in, told him what the car was doing and stood back,” he explains. “It was only then that I realised that I’d just put Jan [Lammers] in the car.
“I found Tom and started to scream at him. I told him that we had got it that far and could make to the end. As I spun around and walked off, I collapsed in a heap.
Nielsen moved the Jaguar into the lead in the penultimate hour when Baldi bizarrely lost it in the infield behind the safety car. And chance of a comeback disappeared when the driver's door on the battered Porsche blew off.
Brundle describes the race as a “bit of an ordeal”, though it didn’t end with the chequered flag.
“Sir John Egan [boss of Jaguar] insisted that we went out to dinner to celebrate,” he recalls. “I was completely out of it until I had a couple of mouthfuls of what must be the best steak ever.”
Dowe was beyond help, however. “I’d worked 18-hour days for four months,” he says. “I just fell asleep in my food.”
Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.
