There feels a neat and seamless quality to former McLaren Formula E team boss Ian James taking charge of the Jaguar FE squad in his new role as managing director of JLR Motorsport.
Completing his first day in the role on Wednesday, James will have driven into Jaguar's expansive Kidlington facility realising that the imperative will be to absorb and understand how one of Formula E's most successful teams operates and thrives.
Although to the outside world he appears to be a completely natural fit. It is not fanciful to suggest that James was the only team principal on the grid whose face would fit so readily at Jaguar.
That isn't so much down to the silky and authentically smooth style James famously exhibits. It's actually down to the fact that like his predecessor James Barclay, who'd led Jaguar since its return to international motorsport, deep down he is also a racer in both the philosophical and principled senses.
Decorating all of this is strong experience in taking a similarly prestigious manufacturer, Mercedes, to multiple successes between 2019 and 2022. There will have been few, if any, serious alternatives in the mix to take the Jaguar role when Barclay gave notice of his exit in April.
"When the opportunity came up, it was a no-brainer," James tells The Race in his first interview since being confirmed in the top role at Jaguar.
"The opportunity to come back again, to lead a works team and a manufacturer, especially as we head towards Gen4, was great."
At face value and taking into account the achievements of the organisations they have led, James and Barclay share quite a bit of common ground.
Large-scale manufacturer operations, results-based achievements and a smoothness in blending corporate messaging with sporting credibility as leaders.
The two are good friends and their paths criss-crossing in such a manner between McLaren (where Barclay will lead the Hypercar project) and Jaguar got a fair few paddock cynics suggesting that the neatness of it all was somehow orchestrated.
This is something that both laugh off publicly. But practically it clearly makes a great deal of sense for each to be sharing insights to further their bedding-in periods at their new challenges, and they are doing so.
"We're speaking almost on a daily basis at the moment," James admits.
"We're just making sure that we're both in a position to hit the ground running in those with our new challenges as well. He has been incredibly helpful in ensuring that I've got the intel as I start a completely new organisation."
But James also gives an insight into his style of management when he says that "the one thing that I've learned over the last sort of seven or so years, and working back in motorsport, again, in particular in Formula E, is we're in a constant state of flux and a constant transition".
The 'bucket list' Defender Rally challenge
JLR's Defender Rally entry to the 2026 Dakar Rally and FIA World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC) will commence later this year and James will, through his wider role as managing director of JLR Motorsport, also be the team principal and MD of the Defender Rally programme.
After recently completing a successful test in Morocco, the Defender Dakar D7X-Rs will debut at the Dakar and compete in the new ‘Stock' category for production-based cars.
A three-car Defender entry has been confirmed for Dakar's most decorated competitor ever Stéphane Peterhansel, Sara Price and Rokas Baciuška, with Peterhansel and Baciuška then contesting the remaining four rounds of the 2026 W2RC.
James describes his adventure as "the cherry on the cake" of his Jaguar appointment and a "big bucket list item for me because my passion for motorsport, although in recent years has very much been circuit racing-based, actually it all started more on the rally scene and off road side of things as a kid. So, to have the opportunity to do both now is pretty unique and quite exciting".
How and when to push
James will start to exert some of his own personality and his own ways of working over Jaguar in time. But in the initial bedding-in period, he is intelligent and experienced enough to know to tread carefully.
"I'm not coming into, in any way, shape or form, dictate how things should be managed or run," said James.
"I think that the Jaguar TCS Formula E team, under James's leadership, have done a phenomenal job to date. So, what I'll be looking to do is just observing initially, looking at where I can support going forward, and make sure that we can unlock the performance that's undoubtedly there.
"We saw that coming off the back of last season, it was pretty impressive. And I think the key thing there is to continue that momentum, and then in parallel make sure that as an organisation we've got the bandwidth and the resources to push forward in our preparation for Gen4 as well."
This will be a key test for James because dovetailing a competitive final season of Gen3 with the development of the Gen4 programme is a colossal ask for manufacturers.
James was a kind of shadow presence in 2018 when Mercedes came into Formula E at the start of Gen2 via the HWA organisation for the 2018-19 season, so didn't really feel the white heat of the development period that went on in late 2017 and early 2018.
Then, with McLaren at the advent of Gen3, his team was then a customer of Nissan.
So, the end of 2025 and the first 10 months of 2026 will be a demanding time, especially as many will make the simple assessment that last season's dominant team, in the second half at least, quite possibly has its best-ever chance of crowning one of its drivers as champion, something it has not done in a decade of competing in Formula E.
