A Jaguar Mk1’s emotional journey to Revival

In 2023, close to 1,000 historic vehicles from 1948-1966 – when the Motor Circuit was first open for motorsport – made their way to Chichester. One of the cars due to join them there was a Jaguar Mk1, co-owned by Australian Garry Maidment and prepared by William Heynes and his team.

Maidment took on joint ownership of the car together with a friend towards the end of 2022, and enlisted the help of Heynes, whose family has a long history working with Jaguars (he is the grandson of another William Heynes, the former Jaguar chief executive and E-Type co-creator), to manage its preparation and maintenance. “I went to William right at the beginning when we were thinking about purchasing a Mk1,” Maidment tells us. “I didn’t know him at all, but I’d been following him on Instagram. I gave him a call and he was happy to help us find one. I come from a racing background in Australia, my father and brother both raced Speedway, with my brother David working with V8’s and Ute racing in Australia so I grew up with that. And Jaguars have always been a bit of a childhood dream for me, so it’s been a long time coming.”

Once the purchase was complete, work began in earnest to get the car ready for competition. High on the list of priorities was to race at the Goodwood Revival. The St. Mary’s Trophy reverted back to the 1950s for 2023, and the Mk1 was awarded a place on the entry list. “I think a big part of that was based on us working with William, having him involved with the car helped to get it to Goodwood,” says Maidment. “We were just very lucky that we got the invitation, thanks to the Duke and extremely excited to go.”

With the roadmap laid before them, the race was on to get everything ready for the trip down to West Sussex. Maidment was confident, however, that with Heynes in control, everything would fix into place. “The knowledge that William brings from being around Jaguar’s historic moments as a young bloke is amazing,” says Maidment. “I love his approach to how he works with his business and his attention to detail and passion.”

After racing in a number of meetings through the summer, the car had been fitted with new half shafts, and undergone complete rebuild of the differential, carburettor and gearbox. In the words of Heynes, “We were humming.” Everyone was ready to take the MK1 to Goodwood. Former F1 driver David Brabham was lined up to drive alongside former Autoclub Racing Driver of the Year Cameron Jackson, and expectations were high for a solid top-five finish.

Then, with just two days to go before the car would be taking to the Motor Circuit, it suffered a water pump failure. Fortunately, what could have been a disaster was averted thanks to the help of XK expert Guy Broad and his specialised spare parts business, who assisted by cobbling together a new water pump with a selection of Alvis and Jaguar parts.

With the water pump fixed, the car was running cleanly again on Thursday morning, so it was time to load it onto the trailer ready to transport down to Goodwood that afternoon. Many of the preparations were already underway. Tyres, tools and personnel and owners, had arrived at the Motor Circuit, so the car was all that was left. Heynes drove the 100 metres to the trailer, and as it sat idling, he recalled the word that came to mind when he heard the engine noise changing: “Catastrophic.”

Further investigations revealed a bent valve, and suddenly all the preparation, all the hard work, all the effort was undone. The engine had expired in the worst possible way, and now any chance of racing at the Revival looked to be lost. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt such total, gutting desperation,” recalls Heynes. “For something to go wrong at the last minute, that was totally out of our own control.”

Heynes says it was that moment, when all looked to be lost, that kickstarted the most remarkable three days of his life. A moment when the incredibly tight-knit community that surrounds historic motorsports came together to pull off the near-impossible.

It began with a phone call with Ben de Chair, Chief Engineer at Ten Tenths, a company that works to keep such classic racing cars in peak operating condition, who helped the team to begin formulating a Plan B. The decision was made to load the Jaguar into the trailer and set off to Goodwood in the hope that there would still be time to execute a fix, somehow. The only real option however, was to swap out the expired engine for a new one, an option offered to them by Mk1 racing driver Grant Williams who had an engine, albeit all the way back in Wales.

Maidment was at Goodwood when he received the call that the engine had blown. “It was unfortunate,” he says, deadpan. “The only thing that we hadn’t done in the 12 months beforehand was rebuild the engine.”

Heynes recalls his thought process as they were on route to the Circuit: “I was very concerned. We put a blown-up car into our trailer without any solutions. Without any hesitation I phoned Grant and he said, ‘I’ve got an engine, meet me down there.’ He drove three hours back to Wales, put his spare engine into a transit van, and they were back at Goodwood before we got here.”

The team were up until 03:00 on the Friday morning, working on the car and getting the engine fitted, aided by a general wave of support from friends and peers around the paddock.

“The support was just absolutely immense, and they asked for nothing in return,” Heynes continues. “They showed a level of kindness I’ve never experienced. Our first Goodwood would have failed without their help.”

It speaks volumes of the camaraderie within the paddock at the Goodwood Revival, and historic motorsport in general, that this car was sorted and ready some 15 minutes before scrutineering. The spirit of the event flourished and brought this community of people with a shared passion to see these cars race even closer together.

And race it did, after months of hard work. The team got the car out on track for Official Practice at Midday on that same Friday. All of the effort was worth it.

“It would be so much easier to just throw the cover over the car and put your feet up,” says Heynes. “But to be welcomed so warmly by the paddock, with our neighbours helping us to sort things out… Everybody was so helpful and loving. Nobody wanted us to fail. And that’s historic motorsport.”

The car wasn’t running perfectly, and the stifling heat of that weekend meant it was suffering as much as the engineers working on them, along with several others. Maidment recalls the efforts that continued throughout the weekend. “The car wasn’t running as well as we wanted it to, as you would probably expect after just ‘dropping in’ an engine. We kept tweaking it until Saturday, then we got on track and started the race.

“I was just feeling bad for David Brabham, because he’d done such a great job in supporting Cameron with the testing. But he was great, he was very patient with us and he had a lot of support and a lot of advice on what we needed to do.”

The work continued through Saturday, and into the evening after race one, which ended for the team when the water pump failed once more due to the excessive heat. Fate’s saving grace was that Part 2 of the St. Mary’s Trophy was the final race on Sunday evening, so there was plenty of time to get the car back up and running. The whole team was ready for one last push to finish the Revival on a high.

With Cam Jackson at the wheel, the Jaguar Mk1 that had been through so much in the prior three days, starting at 21^st on the grid. Heynes, who stood on the pitwall as the action unfolded, remembers, “The first few minutes I was in sheer panic. Listening to everything on the car, thinking about tyre wear, bearings, and things like that.”

Finally, after 27 minutes and 22 seconds of stress and tension, with 16 laps completed, the car came home in ninth place, and at that point all of the emotion of the weekend broke the dam.

“That last race was amazing,” Maidment says. “I didn’t realise how emotional it was going to be. When the car finished, we were laughing and crying in equal measure. There were hugs on the pit wall and a feeling of pure joy to have finished. It was an emotional rollercoaster for the weekend, but for it to come together the way that it did, and to have everyone in the community come together and do what they did for our first Goodwood was amazing. Getting the car back into the pits, it was just a celebration. Everyone was very, very happy that we were lucky enough to do it.”

The scenes on the pit wall as the chequered flag waved were saturated with raw emotion. “It was pure relief,” says Heynes. “I think I kissed David Brabham. We were just in floods of tears, totally spent. I’ve never had emotions like them. Just a mixture of honour, integrity, total love for the sport. Even [journalist] Chris Harris came up afterwards and gave us a pat on the back. Literally four hours before that I didn’t think we’d have the car running.”

It’s a testament to the spirit of the Goodwood Revival that stories like this can be told. It would have been completely understandable, and perhaps more believable, for this car to have been resigned to the garage for the weekend. Instead, the motivation of everyone involved demonstrates everything we love about historic motorsport.

“I don’t think that happens anywhere else,” Heynes continues. “The cars are the party, we’re just there to facilitate it. Without the Goodwood spirit, I really think classic motorsport would be dead in the water.”

That Goodwood spirit would appear to be in safe hands. The likes of Heynes and his team are proving that the next generation of enthusiasts and engineers are more than up to the task of carrying the torch. And it’s car owners such as Garry Maidment who hope to facilitate that generational transition. “I don’t think we’d be doing it if we weren’t working with William, he brings a younger mindset that is so important for the future of classic cars,” he says. “There’s a good group of young people that are coming to the Revival already, but it’s important to build on that – there are so many opportunities for them to come onboard now, whether it be car ownership or mechanics and engineering.”

It’s a sentiment we certainly agree with, and one that fills us with more confidence than ever that the Goodwood Revival will continue to deliver the greatest experience of historic motorsport in the world, thanks to teams like these, knitted together as part of one, passionate, sporting community – made up of many, many special, dedicated people.

Photography by Amy Heynes.