Chapter VI · Summer to October 1986
A championship that swung on gravel, tyre treads and a first-corner collision.
Germany's Norisring street sprint put all three XJR-6s on the grid third, sixth and eighth as the pace car pulled in. Warwick ran sixth early and came home third; the meeting gave the team a double salvo of podium pressure on Porsche.
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Then Jerez, August 1986 — the race that may have decided everything. The 360 km Trofeo Silk Cut ended with XJR-6s second, third and fourth on the road, but the photograph tells the real story: Warwick beached in the gravel, rear wing high, a marshal at the tail. First-corner contact, drive-shaft failures — and a championship slipping into the sand.
Spa-Francorchamps, 14 September, delivered what the book simply calls "the race of the year". The last European round ran deep into the dark — and the night finish, Sauber ahead, Silk Cut Jaguar behind, is one of the season's defining images.
September brought consolation — the sweet kind. At the Nürburgring's non-championship race, Eddie Cheever gave the team a win, then stood on the podium between Hans-Joachim Stuck and Klaus Ludwig, arm aloft.
The finale, at Fuji on 5 October, closed the season with the team lined up in the autumn light — before Cheever and Warwick put the XJR-6 third in the last race of the World Championship.
Final instalment: We will be back — the 1986 standings