How the Swallows Jaguars soared to success

“Win on Sunday, sell on Monday.” It’s the traditional mantra by which manufacturers justify their involvement in motorsport. But perhaps not what you’d expect to hear in a club racing paddock.

But those are the words of Tom Robinson, 2022 Jaguar champion and managing director of marque specialist Swallows Racing. The long-running Jaguar Championship – currently under the auspices of the Classic Sports Car Club, but inaugurated by the Jaguar Enthusiasts’ Club – splits its classes based primarily on modification rather than cubic capacity. Regulatory freedom allows Swallows to apply the original ethos of racing and use the championship as a proving ground for its products – aimed not only at racing customers but, more significantly, the wider public through its specialist performance parts.

The process of constant evolution and refinement clearly works. Robinson’s ambition was to take on the pacesetting XJSs with a saloon. He did just that, piloting his supercharged XJR6 to 11 wins from 14 races in his title-winning year. Job done, the focus switched to developing an XK8 for younger brother Jack, which culminated in a second title success for the family in 2025.

Independent Jaguar specialist Swallows, its name derived from the marque’s pre-war identity, was formed by the brothers’ father Gary in Ruislip 40 years ago. The firm moved to its current base in Rooksbridge, Somerset a decade later. Robinson Sr – a former Superkarts racer who enjoyed success on the Isle of Man’s fearsome roads running TM machinery in partnership with Chris Cattermole – remains heavily involved.

While his kart motors had their roots in motorcycles, Robinson’s sons began their competition careers on two wheels. Tom, 32, raced grasstrack as a youngster while Jack, 26, was a promising motocross rider but perhaps a little too fearless for his parents’ liking… The family’s focus on racing cars, and aligning that with their business, came through customer Richard Knott of the Castle Combe rally school.

“We never considered racing Jaguars until Richard came up with this idea to race his XJS,” admits Tom. After a couple of years of running Knott and honing his engineering skills, Robinson set about building his own racer for 2017: a 1995 XJR6, Jaguar’s first supercharged road car.

Tom, Jack and Gary Robinson (left to right) have forged a successful team alongside a road car business

Photo by: Steve Jones

“I did my apprenticeship and learned my way around a car first,” he explains, “which helped massively when I then went on to race. It gives you a really good understanding for developing the car and working out what it needs. The supercharged car had never been raced and it ultimately was a cheap way of gaining the power to be at the front, but it did take a fair bit of development over several years.”

On teaming up with Adam Powderham – who’d raced an earlier XJ40-generation (normally aspirated) XJR but was considering supercharging – in a sister car, it proved tough going initially. In theory, the standard supercharger should have provided enough power to be in the XJSs’s ballpark, allowing them to focus on the big saloon’s handling deficiencies.

“But we quickly found out that, because you’re so high up in the rpm all the time, you’re running that supercharger at basically its most inefficient point,” recalls Robinson. Fighting against rising intake temperatures was a constant battle that drained the car of power. After plenty of iterations, the solution was a more modern twin-vortex, single-screw supercharger from the Jaguar F-Type – and to separate its cooling via a newly designed inlet manifold, which “unleashed crazy amounts of performance”.

"We never considered racing Jaguars until Richard came up with this idea to race his XJS" Tom Robinson

In the meantime, the major handling issue of tramping under heavy braking into corners was traced to a combination of the saloon’s limitations in brake balance, ride-height and suspension travel. Rear suspension mounting points must remain standard, but Swallows designed a workaround. Fixing that exposed a weakness in the differential, which led to Swallows designing a new casing.

“When we got all that working in tandem we had pretty good pace,” reflects Robinson. It took until the end of 2019 to earn a first win at Thruxton. Thereafter, he proved the man to beat, challenging for the crown over the next two years before his 2022 title charge.

Alongside, brother Jack spent a season racing a standard XJ40 ahead of debuting the squad’s XK8 in 2023. While the GT platform offered an improved starting point, Swallows applied lessons from the XJR6 to fast-track development of the 4.2-litre, V8-powered car.

Tom Robinson won in his XJR6 in 2022 after years of development

Photo by: Steve Jones

Tom harnessed his expertise in chassis dynamics, using ChassisSim simulation software. Weight distribution was optimised by moving the driver rearwards. Improved stiffness came from an integral rollcage and a version of the chassis brace Swallows had developed for XK8 road cars, which itself was derived from the XJR6’s development.

A similar approach applied to the differential, Tarox brakes and AVO dampers developed in partnership with the manufacturers. “The road kits we offer are not as aggressive as we use in a race environment, but they are directly developed across from what we do,” adds Robinson. The championship’s abandonment of control tyres allowed Swallows to unlock further performance through its relationship with Yokohama.

The younger Robinson scored two podiums first time out at Silverstone, commanding the lightly modified class. But 10 class wins in 16 races could not deny Guy Connew’s V12-powered XJS the overall title on countback.

Engine development came next. Swallows had already worked with fellow racer Stephen Dowell’s Performance Vehicle Engineering concern to improve the XJR6’s engine mapping, so followed the same route with the XK8.

“We made Jack’s car competitive much quicker because we already had a good recipe,” says Robinson. “Jack’s first season, it was a completely stock engine but we had a Maxx ECU on it with all the sensors we needed. So essentially we data logged everything and then we had a really good understanding of what we could do to improve it.”

Robinson Sr’s competition background in two-stroke engines, where scavenging exhaust gases is critical, proved useful. Swallows’ own stainless steel performance exhausts for the V8 incorporate a crossover from each bank’s manifold to improve flow. Combined with modified cylinder heads and cams, it made “a considerable difference” to the V8’s power and pushed it up a class for 2024.

The Swallows set-up has been expanding in CSCC events in recent years

Photo by: Steve Jones

That in turn impacted reliability, with alternator and braking issues arising. Though he scored the XK8’s first win at Silverstone mid-season, the younger Robinson languished eighth in the 2024 points. But having overcome those niggles, Jack romped to the 2025 title with 10 wins from 14 races.

Looking ahead, the brothers are unlikely to be chasing championships in 2026. Instead they’ll seek to further push the boundaries with their title winners and an F-Type added to their stable last winter. Effectively a GT4-spec car, the Chevrolet LS-engined machine was previously campaigned in Britcar by Newbarn Racing. Robinson intends to return to that arena, but only after further development in CSCC Slicks Series contests, having pinpointed some weaknesses in a one-off outing.

“It was, for us, an absolute no-brainer to have the last Jaguar GT as well,” he explains. “Although it doesn’t have a Jag powerplant, it’s a good opportunity for us to develop a lot of our chassis and brake stuff on the car. We’ve made a new diff casing for it and got a new brake set-up coming.”

The XK8 is set for more Modern Classics outings after a podium finish first time out at Thruxton – a day after clinching the Jaguar crown

The XJR6 and XK8 will also spread their wings into other CSCC series. Over the past three years, “a light refresh” of the saloon morphed into a bare-metal overhaul, including a fully stitch-welded chassis and integral rollcage to improve strength. “I want to see what the limit of the thing is,” reckons Robinson. “I feel that there’s a lot more lap time in it so I want to try the Yokohama A052 on it within the Jags. But I also want to stick a slick on it and run it in the Special Saloons and Modsports.”

The XK8 is set for more Modern Classics outings after a podium finish first time out at Thruxton – a day after clinching the Jaguar crown. “Jack was carrying 100kg so we took that out to run in the Moderns and it was two seconds a lap quicker,” enthuses Robinson. “So we’d like to set the car up around having no weight and then go again. We know that there’s a little bit of time left in that car.”

Alongside running customer cars, including Andrew Maynard’s ex-Nurburgring 24 Hours Jaguar XFR, working with Sustain to introduce synthetic fuel into club racing, and their SCV8 side-project – plus the day-to-day business! – this family Robinson have plenty on their plates.

Ex-Britcar F-Type is one of Swallows' latest projects at its Somerset base

Photo by: Steve Jones

The cool SCV8 side project

“I just thought it was the coolest X-Type I’d ever seen.”

Tom Robinson recalls seeing the Jaguar from Andy Rouse’s unfulfilled SCV8 series on a magazine cover as a child, 20-odd years ago. The 550bhp, V8-powered spaceframe racers were pitched as Britain’s version of Aussie V8 Supercars while British Touring Cars were in a post-Super Touring slump. Sadly, the series never got going. But, when Rouse’s original test car came up for sale three years ago, Robinson knew he had to have it.

“I always joked with my dad I was going to buy it,” he laughs. “It was meant to be.”

Less relevant to Swallows’ day-to-day business, recommissioning the car is a side-project fitted around other work. Various delays have arisen, from discovering a hairline crack in the Hewland transaxle to sourcing an engine. The intended Nicholson-McLaren Indycar V8 was not viable, and the car was supplied with its original Lotus test motor. Swallows eventually chose an engine from another abandoned project of the era: a Jaguar Daytona Prototype.

“We decided that we needed to use a Jaguar plant,” explains Robinson. “It looks like a Jag V8 but it’s basically a Cosworth. It’s a flat-plane crank, it’s a complete one-off. We’re not actually going to run the flat-plane orientation because it’s essentially a very fragile engine with four-hour run times for rebuilds. We thought it would take the fun out of it so we’ve reduced the performance a little bit. But it’s a dry sump so we’ll probably run it around 8000rpm.”

This article is one of many in the monthly Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the January 2026 issue and subscribe today.

To keep themselves even busier, the SCV8 side project is coming together

Photo by: Steve Jones