Jaguar E-Type Racing in 1961

Jaguar set aside seven of the first cars for chosen racers. Motor Sport listed them in 2018: two for John Coombs, two for Tommy Sopwith's Equipe Endeavour, two for Peter Berry Racing and one for Sir Gawaine Baillie. In the same article it found a curiosity at the head of the list: "a certain 'FRW England' was at the top of the priority customer list", the name of Jaguar's own competition manager. Which numbers the seven carried, and whether all were delivered as planned, the sources read do not say.

The cars were close to standard. The Experimental Department machined and gas-flowed the block, cylinder head and inlet manifold, and fitted high-compression pistons, a close-ratio gearbox (transmission) and a lightened flywheel; the chassis and body were left alone. Motor Sport called it, in 2021, "relatively gentle modification".

Endeavour's ECD 400 carries the chassis number 850005 on its factory plate, and Baillie's car was 850008, registered GB 8488. Coombs's car ran as BUY 1 in its first two seasons; it later became 4 WPD and was rebuilt in Lightweight form. Peter Sargent raced a car of his own as well, though it is not on Motor Sport's list: it ran at the Nürburgring in August and in British races that autumn.⁠source 2​source 5​source 6​source 1

At Oulton Park, Salvadori had led at first, on new brake pads fitted to discs worn the day before, and he later explained what went wrong.

Counting the races above, the E-Type won four in Britain: Oulton Park, Crystal Palace, Snetterton in July and Brands Hatch in October. Ferrari's 250 GT SWB won six: Spa, both Peco Trophies of June and August, the British Empire Trophy, the Tourist Trophy and the Molyslip Trophy.⁠source 3​source 2​source 7​source 8​source 9​source 10​source 11​source 12​source 13​source 1​source 14​source 15​source 16​source 17​source 18

The first E-Type results racingsportscars records in North America are at St-Eugène, Quebec, on 18 June 1961 (Norm Namerow) and, in the United States, on 3 September 1961: Bill Krause 3rd at Santa Barbara, first in C Production. Krause, entered by Frank Millard Sports Cars, was 2nd at Riverside in October, behind a Corvette and first in B Production. These rows rest on racingsportscars' filing of the cars as E-Types. The American story continues on the America page.⁠source 1​source 19​source 20

The Ferrari 250 GT SWB was the car to beat, raced in Britain by Moss for Rob Walker and by Parkes for Maranello Concessionaires and Endeavour. Aston Martin's DB4 GT and DB4 GT Zagato were the other rivals: Ireland's DB4 GT was 2nd to Hill at Oulton Park, and Davison's Zagato won at Aintree. In America the rival was the Corvette. At Oulton Park, Sears's and Graham Whitehead's SWBs finished 4th and 5th, behind both E-Types.

Motor Sport looked back in 1984 and wrote that the E-Type "made relatively little impact internationally on the track in '61 and '62". The answer was the lighter cars of 1962–64, on the Lightweight and Low Drag Coupé pages. Baillie's GB 8488 was sold as a road car after its season, and in 2018 it raced again, in the Goodwood Revival's Kinrara Trophy, and finished 16th.⁠source 7​source 9​source 10​source 13​source 17​source 3​source 11​source 21​source 5