Tom Walkinshaw was key to Jaguar’s return to racing in the 1980s, persuading the factory to take on a campaign in the European Touring Car Championship, with the XJS in ’82. He also convinced John Egan, the firm’s chairman, to allow TWR to create a Group C car from scratch, rather than develop the US-spec XJR-5.

He hired Tony Southgate, handing the F1 designer a brief to create a Kevlar-reinforced carbon-fibre monocoque that would form the basis of the XJR cars. For 1988, all five of the XJR-9s had been examined in a wind tunnel to ensure they’d reach 240mph. But reliability was a constant worry, especially the gearbox. Jan Lammers somehow managed to drag his car to victory jammed in fourth gear, but Brundle wasn’t so lucky, retiring with a cylinder-head failure.

When 1990 rolled around, bad luck almost haunted Brundle again. The XJR-12 he shared with David Leslie and Alain Ferté led but, at 07:00hrs on Sunday, a drive belt slipped off the water pump pulley and that was that. Except, it wasn’t.