Brand new Yokohama-shod GT2 challenger hit Road Atlanta circuit

The first lap for RSR’s Jaguar XKR.

The brand new Jaguar XKR from RSR turned its first on-track laps Friday at Road Atlanta with an aim toward entering the Monterey Sports Car Championships at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, the final race of the 2009 American Le Mans Series season.

RSR announced this week that team owner Paul Gentilozzi, Scott Pruett and Marc Goossens are the primary drivers. The XKR will have Yokohama tires on it for competition.

The bodywork features a design that is based on the Jaguar XKR and was completed in the Jaguar Advance Design Studio headed by chief designer Ian Callum. The body has undergone intensive computational fluid dynamics work – known as CFD – by the Jaguar aerodynamics department. Information from the CFD was then incorporated into the finished body work which was made in clay at the RSR facility. More than 1,100 man hours were spent during the clay process. The carbon fiber composite body work was molded and produced by a local company in Michigan and conforms to the ACO guidelines.

The Jaguar brand joins what everyone considers the deepest GT2 class in the history of the Series and will have to face off against the likes of Ferrari, Porsche, BMW, Corvette, Panoz, Dodge, Viper and Ford.