MOTORSPORT: Ex-HRT chief is Jaguar's electric spark

Jaguar’s entry to the Formula E electric open-wheeler series will be led by Craig Wilson, who ran Walkinshaw Performance in Australia for six years.

Wilson is now the managing director of Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE), an offshoot of the Williams Formula 1 team and which will be Jaguar’s technical partner in its Formula E campaign, starting in the third season beginning in about 10 months.

Wilson will be the race director when Jaguar takes to the track, replacing the failed team of Italian ex-F1 driver Jarno Trulli and 12 years after Ford offloaded its grand prix team bearing the symbol of the big cat to energy drink company Red Bull for $1.

Having already worked with Jaguar on projects such as its C-X75 hybrid supercar which features in the latest James Bond film, Spectre, WAE will be responsible for the operational running of The Cat’s Formula E race team.

WAE is entrenched in Formula E as the sole supplier of the car batteries which this month won the Race Tech World Motorsport Symposium’s ‘Most Innovative New Motorsport Product' award.

Formula E – strongly championed by the world governing body of motorsport, the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile – began last year and the third round of its second season is this Saturday at Punta Del Este in Uruguay.

WAE has been contracted to lend technical support to all of Formula E’s teams in the first two seasons, but that role will pass next season to French company Spark Racing Technology, the category’s foundation car supplier.

Apart from the racing tie-up announced overnight, Jaguar Land Rover – owned by India’s Tata Motors – said WAE would work with it “to push boundaries of electrification technology” in its road cars.

“There is a saying that racing improves the breed and Jaguar’s entry into Formula E will be a powerful way of honing a new generation of EV technologies for its products,” Wilson said.

“We are delighted that they have chosen Williams Advanced Engineering as their technical partner in this new and high profile chapter in Jaguar’s racing history.

“Williams has extensive knowledge of EV technology, racing car design and the logistics of running a successful racing team, so we are well set to support Jaguar in what promises to be an exciting new challenge for both parties.”

Wilson was based in Melbourne for six years, from 2005 until 2011, as chief executive of Walkinshaw Performance (WP).

It was during that time that WP wrested back control of Holden Racing Team from Mark Skaife, who had taken charge of it amid the upheaval in Tom Walkinshaw’s empire with the collapse of his Arrows F1 team.

A Walkinshaw Jaguar XJ-S driven by John Goss and German Armin Hahne won the Bathurst 1000 in 1985, the first year of Group A in Australia, and Walkinshaw-built Jaguar sports cars, the XJR-9 and XJR-12, won the Le Mans 24-Hour in France in 1988 and 1990.

It was in that latter year that Wilson’s career began as production manager at Jaguar Sport, a joint venture of the British car company and Walkinshaw’s TWR Group.

In more than a decade at TWR Group he was managing director for six years and oversaw projects such as the Aston Martin DB7, Volvo C70, Renault Sport Clio V6 and concept designs of the Bugatti Veyron, Aston Martin Vanquish and Audi RS4.

After his time in Australia, and Tom Walkinshaw’s death in 2010, Wilson co-founded Oxford Applied Technologies before joining WAE in early 2013.