Brian Redman - Two Days with a Racing Legend at the Simeone Museum: Part Two

This is the second of a two-part article on Brian Redman's appearance at the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum. 

Redman, now 75, while mostly known by motorsports fans for his time with Porsche, has a decided Jaguar streak running through his career. In fact, his biggest break in the sport came when he won 14 of 15 races in a Lightweight E-Type racing in the UK for Red Rose Racing. The story resumes in 1974, with an invitation from the Shadow Formula One Team, having accepted a temporary assignment, replacing the recently deceased Tom Price.

After yet another famous brush with death during the 1971 Targa Florio in a Porsche 908/3, Brian did several short stints in F1, eventually being offered a seat at the UOP Shadow team after driver Tom Price was killed in a freak accident at the South African Grand Prix.

"I did a few races for Shadow and they offered me a ride for 1974. Well it was questionable as to whether the Formula 5000 series, where I was driving for Jim Hall and Carl Haas, was going to happen, so I agreed to drive for Shadow.

I then received a call from Carl Haas saying the F5000 series was back on and I decided to stay with that.

Brian went on to win the Formula 5000 championship three times (1974, 75, 76) and sandwiched in a win at Sebring in 1975 with BMW. In 1977, the F5000 series was used to form the basis of the "new" Can Am series, which allowed envelope bodies to be installed on existing F5000 open-wheel cars. He was practicing prior to the first race at St. Jovite track in Quebec Province in Canada when the Lola T-333 Chaparral he was driving went airborn at high speed, and landed upside down breaking Redman's neck, sternum, and ribs. His heart also stopped and he had to be revived on the way to the hospital.

After taking a year to recuperate from the crash and pondering yet another retirement from racing, Brian realized that, "it was the only thing I had really been successful at! I hated selling cars and while I quite enjoyed farming and raising cattle and sheep, I was running out of money so in 1978 I was back at it and almost immediately won my second Sebring 12 hour."

After a triumphant season in the IMSA Camel GT championship in 1981 for Lola, things began to stagnate for Brian until he would receive a phone call from Bob Tullius of Group 44 fame that would change things around.

"Brian, how would you like to drive the Jaguar XJR-5? I would like that very much, Bob, thank you! And with that call, I was back with Jaguar after some 20 plus years."

While the car was initially intended for IMSA's Camel GT series, which consisted mostly of sprint races, Lee Dykstra and Tullius also had the long-distance endurance events in the back of their minds.

"American aerodynamicist Lee Dykstra had designed for Tullius's Group 44 team a GT prototype called XJR-5. It had tremendous downforce, much more than any of its competitors at the time."

"After several wins in 1983 and 1984, we decided to enter Le Mans, more as an experiment than as a serious attempt to win. John Watson and I drove well and the cars themselves were extremely competitive against a virtual army of Porsches."

Back in the States XJR-5s continued to do well; a 3rd at the Daytona 24, an excellent 1-2 at the Miami GP and 2nds at Charlotte, Portland, Sears Point, Pocono and July 4th 3-hour race at Daytona. But it was clear that the competition was heating up, so in 1985 Group 44 produced an entirely new car, the XJR-7. The car showed promise with a win at Road Atlanta and a handful of 2nds, 3rds and 4ths. But Jaguar decided to go with a more ‘global' program and Tom Walkinshaw's TWR team took over the program."

Today, he is active promoting vintage racing through his companies, Intercontinental Events and Targa 66. This July, he will be front and center for the Kohler International Challenge with Brian Redman at Road America in Elkhart Lake, WI, now a fixture on the summer vintage racing calendar. This year the weekend will feature a round of the North American E-Type Challenge, which also consists of races at the Legends of Racing event at Barber Motorsports Park, Birmingham, AL (May 21-22), the Monterey Motorsports Reunion at Laguna Seca Raceway, near Monterey, CA (August 19-21) and the final race, Historic Festival 29 presented by Jaguar at Lime Rock Park in CT (September 2-5), where the North American E-Type Challenge champion will be crowned.

"Racing wasn't really something I aspired to do as a young boy or even as a young man," Redman said of his ultra-successful career. "But I loved cars and I was driving like a maniac on the road. So I thought I had better get off the road and get on the race track."