Jaguar E-Type Racing in America

At the Daytona 3 Hours on 11 February 1962, Walt Hansgen drove Cunningham's E-Type to 17th and first in the GT class up to 4 litres; David Hobbs, in Peter Berry's car, retired with fuel-system trouble. At the Sebring 12 Hours on 24 March, Cunningham and Fitch were 14th, after 176 laps, and again first in the class. In February 1963 Augie Pabst was 10th at Daytona, first in the class once more, while Hansgen was disqualified for a push start.

From 1965 private E-Types ran at Sebring and Daytona until 1969, one of them 30th at Sebring in 1966, and once more at Sebring in 1975.⁠source 7​source 8​source 9​source 10​source 1​source 11

Cunningham raced Jaguars as he sold them. Motor Sport wrote of his fleet:

In 1963 he ran a Lightweight at Sebring, three at Le Mans, and then his Lightweights in American races. At the Road America 500 on 8 September 1963 his three cars were 11th, 20th and 39th. Six days later, in the Bridgehampton 500 km for GT cars, Dan Gurney and Ken Miles won in Cobras, with Hansgen and Richards 3rd and 4th in Lightweights and Cunningham 12th. His E-Types at Le Mans have their own page.⁠source 3​source 7​source 9​source 11​source 12

Qvale's Lightweight, after its class win at Sebring, ran in the United States Road Racing Championship at Laguna Seca on 9 June 1963, where Ed Leslie was 8th. It then passed to private owners, and in 1998 Motor Sport reported it found in a Los Angeles garage, unaccounted for since 1964.

Merle Brennan drove an XKE entered by Qvale. At the first American Road Race of Champions, at Riverside on 15 November 1964, he won B Production and finished 4th overall, behind two Shelby Cobras and a Corvette from the faster A Production class. He was 9th at the second, at Daytona in November 1965.

In Canada, Norm Namerow's class win at St-Eugène, Quebec, in June 1961 is the earliest E-Type result racingsportscars lists in North America, and E-Types raced at Mosport from 1962 to 1964. At Nassau Speed Week, Hans Schenk, a local driver, won the Bahamas Cup in an XKE on 9 December 1962 and again on 8 December 1963.⁠source 11​source 14

In 1974 British Leyland's American company backed two Series 3 V12 roadsters in SCCA B Production, one in the east for Group 44 and one in the west for Huffaker Engineering, with Lee Mueller. Bob Tullius lost the 1974 national title at Road Atlanta by 0.8 seconds to a Corvette, and won it there on 2 November 1975, 29.7 seconds ahead of Ray Anton's Corvette. The V12 programme has its own page.

Six-cylinder E-Types raced on in C Production for Gran Turismo Jaguar. Roger Bighouse was 16th at the Runoffs in 1974, 5th in 1975 behind three Datsun 280Zs, and 9th in 1976, and on 26 October 1980 Freddy Baker won the C Production Runoffs at Road Atlanta, with three Triumph TR8s among the entries. Baker's title came 19 years after Bill Krause's first American results in an E-Type.⁠source 15​source 16​source 17​source 5​source 18​source 11​source 6

The Chevrolet Corvette was the E-Type's constant rival in American production racing, from Riverside in 1961, where one beat Bill Krause, to the Runoffs of 1974 and 1975. In the international races the Ferrari 250 GTO won the GT 3.0 class at Sebring in 1962 and 1963 and won Daytona outright in 1963. From 1963 the AC Cobra took over the big GT class, winning at Bridgehampton that year and taking the first two places at the 1964 American Road Race of Champions. In C Production in the 1970s the rivals were Datsun's Z cars, and in 1980 the Triumph TR8.⁠source 19​source 9​source 1​source 10​source 12​source 4​source 18