P&K Thornton Restoration’s prepared Jaguar E-Type during qualifying laps at Donington Historic Festival

The weather was beautiful and we couldn’t have expected more from our surroundings for our motorsports weekend at Donington Park with our P&K Thornton rebuilt 1961 Jaguar E-Type. The noise at Donington was phenomenal and there was an amazing atmosphere all around - we honestly could not paint you a better picture of just how exciting it was to be there and to be racing our car. We were signed up for the MRL Pre 63 GT 60 minute race as well as the HRDC Dunlop Allstars 30 minute race as our first outing.

Following our testing early in January, as a classic Jaguar specialist, we have spent lots of time fine tuning the Jaguar E-Type. It has been repainted after we renewed the metalwork, a bespoke rewiring for the competition, rebuilt the rear axle, uprated suspension fitted and rebuilt the carburettors. But we focused primarily on the Jaguar E-Type engine, which has had a complete rebuild using the best components available. The upgrades and tuning took its time and came down to the wire as we managed to get the car back together just a day or two before the race - we used every last minute available to us to ensure we had checked everything over before we took the car for a test run.

Our Jaguar E-Type race car ready to race in the pit lane at Donington Park

Starting with the qualifying, both Ciprian Nistorica and Grant Williams were optimistic about the schedule of races - after all at P&K Thornton Restorations, we are experts in our field of motorsport engineering and know the Jaguar E-Type like the back of our hand, but ultimately the car let us down. We started the qualifier well and things felt just as we were expecting them to - the car was handling like it should. However, things were short lived as 3 laps into the qualifier, due to the high revs and excessive stress put on the engine at race pace, an oil leak was identified - as things go in motor racing, anything can happen and we are talking about racing a 60 year old classic Jaguar.

The decision was made to retire the car at this point - as much as we really wanted to race, it is best to not push things and cause unnecessary damage. We know that we will come back stronger and better than ever before for our next race. The oil leak was a huge disappointment, but it is something we can address and ensure is rectified very quickly in our specialist workshop at P&K Thornton Restorations where we pride ourselves on our skills on classic car restoration and repair.