The Williams Formula 1 team would like to expand its involvement with Jaguar on the back of the radical and ambitious C-X75 partnership and progress to the point where the legendary British F1 squad becomes even more firmly involved with the multiple Le Mans winners in the future.
“We would like to become the competition and sporting side of Jaguar,” Williams chairman Adam Parr told Autocar last week. He feels that the collaboration so far with Jaguar on the development of kinetic energy recovery systems has great relevance to the direction F1 is set to evolve over the next few years and that it is logical for both sides to leverage more from their alliance.
See pictures of the Jaguar-Williams C-X75
Parr continued: “Obviously we're rather cagey about giving out detailed technical information, bit I don’t think I’d be telling any secrets if I say that it [the C-X75] could run as a pure electric or totally internal combustion engine. So there is an obvious link here with the new F1 regulations effective from 2014, which will require all cars to be propelled by electric power at any time they are in the pit lane. You could say they are on parallel paths at the present time.
“When the C-X75 was first envisaged it was powered by two jets which were manufactured by Bladon Jets, a British company part-owned by Tata and there is still a lot of interest in the future use of those jets. In the meantime, we have collectively adopted a path which is intended to make the C-X75 the cleanest and most environmentally friendly supercar of all time, so for the moment we are concentrating on a downsized internal combustion engine combined with some pretty amazing kinetic energy-recovery systems.
“The C-X75 is not a Le Mans car, of course. But Jaguar had a tremendous record at Le Mans. I think you can say that competition and high-performance cars is an area where Jaguar are keen to develop their brand.”
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