Three XJ220s were set aside for a Le Mans programme with Jaguar’s racing partner Tom Walkinshaw – although one was never completed, as the original factory prototype was subsequently procured for competition. That ‘unfinished’ car is now in Don Law Racing’s workshop, being fettled for its original purpose under the guidance of Jeff Wilson – chief mechanic on TWR’s XJ220 programme in 1993.

Two of TWR’s three entries retired with engine problems, but the David Brabham/David Coulthard/John Nielsen car recovered from a lengthy stop to finish a class-winning 10th overall… initially, at least.

“It was all about catalytic converters and whether we should run them or not,” Wilson says. “I felt we shouldn’t – it wasn’t a performance problem, but a cat could have fallen apart and caused an interior blockage, just one more potential problem to avoid. We felt we didn’t have to use them. We’d done an IMSA race at Elkhart Lake beforehand without the cat and officials in the States were happy, so to our minds that was fine. We decided to race in that spec and felt confident we’d be able to win our case if there were any post-race arguments.”

As, indeed, they might have done after the car was excluded, except that the appeal forms were filed too late. “I’m not sure what happened there,” Wilson says, “but I still regard it as a win.

“The XJ220 had a very good chassis for racing – tremendously stiff. We didn’t have to do anything to it and just raced it as it was. We obviously had to make it more serviceable for Le Mans, though, getting out as much weight as we possibly could and making the body parts more easily detachable.”

That was just as well, because the XJ220 required a replacement fuel tank during the night before it recovered to finish first on the road.

“The car was quite difficult at first,” says Brabham, “pretty tail-happy – not to mention slow – but a bigger rear wing was fitted for the race and that brought it to life. Even then, the week was far from straightforward. I remember doing pitstop practice with DC when the air hose holding up the jack popped off and the car dropped to the ground, pinning my right foot beneath it. By the time the race came around, my foot was so purple and swollen that I couldn’t get my boot on – I had to wear a sneaker and heel-and-toe with the side of my foot, which I recall being really painful.

“At one stage during the race, I began to get a headache from fumes creeping into the car and my heels started to slip around due to fuel leaking into the footwell. The team asked me to continue to the end of my stint, which I did, and when I came into the pits the car was wheeled into the garage. It was quite clear that fuel was leaking, so when they asked if I would mind completing another few laps while they figured out what best to do, I think I was pretty unequivocal in my response and they had to fit a whole new fuel tank.

“Still, we fought back and against all odds ended up winning our class. To represent Jaguar at Le Mans was already very cool – and my brother was one of the overall race winners with Peugeot, so it was a particularly special moment for the Brabham family. But then, of course, we were disqualified…”