Dates : 09/14JULY 2025
AUTHOR’S NOTE: ANY RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN THIS POST AND THE SIMILAR ONE I WROTE FOR THE GOODWOOD FESTIVAL OF SPEED IN 2022 IS ABSOLUTELY INTENTIONAL – AFTER ALL, I WENT TO THE SAME LOCATION AND CAMPED AT THE SAME CAMPSITE.
I’LL TRY NOT TO REPEAT TOO MUCH OF THE SAME VERBIAGE JUST IN CASE YOU’VE ALREADY READ MY REPORT ON THE 2022 MEETING.
Bit of a long post – apologies, but there was so much to see.
Yes, I know, the event itself was officially only from the Thursday to the Sunday, but I ALWAYS arrive early and leave late……
For those who don’t know, the Goodwood Festival of Speed (FOS) is an annual extravaganza of all things motoring, held in the grounds of Goodwood House, which is the home of the Duke of Richmond and Gordon. He is a speed fanatic and over the years the FOS has got bigger, better and more important as years go by. For example, manufacturers often reveal new cars at FOS because it has gained a world-wide reputation of being the best “mobile” showcase available.
There is always a theme. This year there were two (sort of) with the main emphasis being on the 75th anniversary of Formula 1 racing, combined with celebrating the career of one of motorsport’s great engineers, Gordon Murray. He had his own emblematic symbol in front of Goodwood House.
Another major theme not in the programme was the heat – it was 28.5 degrees C already when I first arrived at the campsite on the Wednesday – and it went higher during the whole weekend. This had a marked effect on how I tackled the whole event. To stay reasonably sane, I tended to go early each day, then pack up around 3 in the afternoon, back to camp for a break, then back again into the event later in the afternoon. It was murderously hot all weekend, early 30 deg C no problem at all ! Despite the additional solar cover, a fan and copious liquid input, it was impossible to go to sleep before 10 pm as my tent was just too hot… The food, ice-cream and beer vendors must’ve made a fortune…..
As before, I think this post will end up being more a “few pix with comments” rather than a description of what I got up to.
This was my fourth visit to FOS and I booked the 4 day camping package, but this time it was Campsite E as the much nearer Campsite H had been sold out LAST YEAR !!!! I still had electric hook up though and “strategic positioning” near the facilities.
My previous modus operandi was to spend one day in the paddock (drooling over all the fantastic machinery, talking to the exhibitors, etc), a day going round the exhibition side of things + the supercars, concourse, etc, a day based on the rally stage at the top of the hillclimb, then the last day on the hillclimb, watching all the maniacs trying to beat the hill record, etc. Then there is always the daily display by the Red Arrows thrown in as well…….. Again, no need to change anything, why fix it, etc, etc.
So here’s a few notes on some of the stuff that caught my eye – in no particular order……….there was lots more, this is but a sample.
PS: IF YOU ARE NOT “INTO” CARS, A WARNING THAT THERE ARE PAGES AND PAGES OF CARS IN THIS POST….. JUST SAYING…….
So bright and early on the Thursday morning, I decide to have a look round the display stand “village” where all the car manufacturers and others (including all the memorabilia sellers, other exhibitors, etc) congregate. It’s good to go early, before the main crowd arrives…..
The Pistonheads stand feature this beautiful Lola Spyder, V8 engine and all.
Gordon Murray Automotive featured one of their T50 track oriented machines, equipped with a 3.9 litre normally aspirated V12 by Cosworth, which revs to 12,000 rev/min – yes, 12,000 revs !! Also has a fan to enhance the aerodynamics, helps it stick to the road. Handling must be awesome……
Next on my list was the Cartier Style et Luxe Concours d’elegance area, which often features some quirky entries. This year they had a class for vans ( “Masters of the Moving Arts”) including an immaculate Ford Transit and an RAC van! Also, the “usual” Bugatti Veyron collection, together with examples of Alpina’s BMW upgrades.
Next door were the Cathedral and Brooklands Paddocks, which included a whole range of machines. Amongst the drift cars, the competition seemed to me to be who has the biggest turbo ! These guys have engines poking out 1000/1200 bhp – no wonder you get tyre smoke !
Just across the aisle were a couple of the World Endurance Championship (WEC) Hyper cars that I like – the sort that complete in the annual 24 Hours of Le Mans. The green Aston Martin Valkyrie AMR-LMH on show was not one of the actual race cars that successfully finished at this year’s Le Mans, but was still mightily impressive in its detailed engineering, 6.5 litre V12 Cosworth engine, etc.
In the next “pit box” was an example of the Cadillac V-Series R running in the same Championship. As you would expect from an American team, it features a mighty thundering V8, although the chassis was made by Dallara in Italy.
One thing I discovered is that the team running the car (JOTA)
are based in Frant, near Tunbridge Wells, where I was born and grew up – small world.
Also in this paddock was this beast called “Project Midnight”. Built by Subaru USA, it’s a much modified WRX model, built specifically for breaking records. I have to say that when it was moving around in the paddock after one of its runs, it sounded almost like a normal street machine, but it certainly didn’t go like one !
And then there was the Ford stand………Well what can I say ! They had the complete “fleet” of Supervan’s on display plus an OUTRAGEOUS F-150 Lightning Supertruck – I mean OUTRAGEOUS !!!!!!! The original Supervan was a V8 powered Transit van built purely by Ford as a publicity gimmic. Underneath it had all sorts of bits from a Ford GT40 racer.
Then they decided to get a bit more serious and wrap a fibreglass replica of the then current 1984 Transit body shell shape around the underpinnings of one of Mr Ford’s C100 Group C race cars. After that came Supervan 3, which was originally powered by an ex F1 V8 engine, now fitted with a more “sensible” V6, still with 300 bhp though !
The next generation Supervan 4 crossed over to an all electric configuration, with 4 motors giving around 2000 bhp…… The version they had at FOS was what they called V4.2. It won the FOS Shootout last year. Presumably somewhat fearsome in performance, it needs the skill of GT/WEC endurance driver Romain Dumas to keep it under control. Made a helluva weird noise going up the hill……
The F150 truck is another generation on, using a similar electric set up as the V4.2. What a beast ! It apparently won the famous USA Pikes Peak Hill Climb last year, again Mr D doing the driving. I guess as a publicity vehicle (!) for Mr Ford it’s been highly successful but I would call its styling functional rather that pretty……. Still outrageous though !
In the same paddock (see below lining up to take a run up the hill) was Damon Hill, driving the same BRM P578 car that his dad Graham used for his first F1 driver’s titles. That must’ve been a bit of a buzz…..
Right behind him was Nick Mason’s (he of Pink Floyd fame) beautiful Maserati 250F, driven by a Mr Franchitti on this occasion. How much is that car worth ??????
Back to the paddock. Fairly close to being the winner of my OUTRAGEOUS class was this Shadow-Chevrolet Mk 1 which competed in the Can-Am Series in the early 70’s. Outrageous in that it was like a go-cart, but with an enormously powerful engine in the back. Not much protecting the driver, it must’ve been a handful – very twitchy perhaps…. Note the radiators in the rear wing. The more successful Shadow Can-Am cars were, shall we say, more conventional.
In amongst the Touring Cars was this Holden VE Commodore V8, an Aussie muscle car. My photo shows Jake Hill (British Touring Car ace ) being shown the controls (for the first time perhaps ?) just before he went out to do his first run up the hill – talk about last minute dot com…… Despite that, he did win the Touring Car Class and came 5th in the Timed Shootout final – can’t keep a good man down.
The Inner Courtyard was brimmed full of Rolls Royce machinery, ancient and modern. There was even the Roller from Goldfinger – supposedly !!!!!!
The Porsche Le Mans Café enclosure had a couple of interesting exhibits, namely racers that had been turned into road cars. I’ll let the display boards from both tell their individual stories.
Toyota had a load of interesting stuff on a BIG stand. Apart from a hydrogen fuel cell version of their Hilux pickup, there was something called a GR LH2 Racing Concept. Essentially a liquid hydrogen powered concept racer developed with a view to there being a hydrogen class sometime soon for the Le Mans 24 hour endurance race. It’s based on their current Endurance racer but built to develop the hydrogen technology and support infrastructure.
They also had two prototype versions (GT Concept, road version and GT Racing Concept (FIA GT3 race version)) of their new sports car, complete with V8 motor. I guess this/these would be the successor to the current LFA model.
There was lots of good stuff on what could be called the “Gordon Murray Stand”. He’s been designing race cars for many decades, starting with a home-built Lotus 7 looking machine, through a long association in F1 with Brabham (including the “notorious” fan car…) and McLaren (including the legendary F1 GTR in different disguises, a winner at Le Mans).
Currently his company Gordon Murray Automotive offers a range of V12 engined sleek road and track cars. See above for an example.
The Audi and Mercedes stands included both ancient and more modern cars. I particularly like the Mercedes W196 Streamliner – very advanced aerodynamics for 1954.
Inevitably (since it was the celebration of F1) there was a whole “fleet” of Red Bull Racing machines, including Renault V8’s, Honda V6’s and hybrid examples.
Also on the RB stand was Mr Newey’s latest creation the RB17. What a fantastic looking machine…. I’ll let the display board give you the facts – the smudge is the sun – not me…. I want one – but not much good for shopping !
A couple of the F1 “underdog” runners I spotted included the Hesketh 308 and the Wolf WR4. There was also an example of the 1990 Leyton House-Judd engined machine-designed by a young engineer called Adrian Newey – its that man again! Not forgetting Ross Brawn’s Brawn-Mercedes BGP 001 which gave Jenson Button his championship. Good to see these machines that were run against the big-budget works teams.
The “big boys” were well represented with contributions from McLaren, Sauber, Williams, Lotus, Ferrari, Haas, etc
And also “old fashioned” racers, like the Repco Brabham, Lotus Climax 25, Lotus 18 – not a wing in sight….
We must not forget there were a huge number of two wheel contraptions dashing up the hill as well. Not particularly my top interest, there is certainly lots of fantastic engineering stuffed into some very small spaces on the more modern bikes.
I spotted Mr Carl Fogarty (4 times World Superbike champion) in preparation for his next run.
And then there was this – the worlds fastest monowheel. Very strange machine but the guys behind it seemed determined to make it a success. I spent a bit of time talking about the engineering challenges such a device represented – definitively a bit different !
On one of my “return” visits later in the day, I explored the “Performance Parking” area, where owners of exotic machinery can park, in exchange for people gawping at their cars. A Shelby Daytona Coupe, several very expensive Ferrari’s and an Ultimate GTR caught my eye.
Mr Shmee150 (aka Timothy John Burton) had his new model Ford GT40 there as well. He is a well-known vlogger and You Tuber with seemingly bottomless pockets – he always seems to have the latest new and very expensive exotica – very jealous, but his car insurance must be astronomical ……
Then off to the rally stage… Before that I found the McMurtry stand where they had a car parked somewhat differently. This is a small highly engineered vehicle which includes a “ground breaking” fan enhanced aerodynamic system. It won the FOS shootout in 2022 with Max Chilton at the wheel.
They claim that it generates enough downforce for it to be driven upside down – although this one is bolted down, for obvious H + S reasons.
And here it is – doing the “impossible”.
Back in the land of “sensible” cars, I spent some time at/on the rally stage. There’s lots of good viewing places for you to see these lunatics threading their way through the trees along the course. Sometimes difficult to see through the dust clouds though…. And the noise – lovely.
Interesting for me was the first MG Metro 6R4, built by Williams for Austin Rover. There were a load of other examples to gawp over, plus one in build, showing the detailed engineering of the innards.
Lots of well known brands/models, including Hyundai, Peugeot, Audi, Subaru, etc.
At the bottom of the hill was the BIG Porsche Experience stand with all of the model range available to clamber over, including this Cayenne GTS Coupe. Apparently, you can get this tent/gazebo extension as an accessory for the car. These two guys in deck chairs were nothing to do with Porsche. They were just being dead cheeky and watching one of the many giant event displays – 10/10 for effort in the heat !!!!!
On the Saturday there was what was called the “Champions Balcony Moment”. Celebrating 75 years of F1 meant that there were more F1 cars than a normal FOS – and cars need drivers. So there were no fewer than eight F1 champions, including Sir Jackie Stewart, Emerson Fittipaldi, Mario Andretti, Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, Jacque Villeneuve and Mika Hakkinen. All were driving cars over the weekend (some more than just F1 cars), as well – can’t resist it, can they ?
There were other F1 drivers present as well, including Riccardo Patrese, Gerhard Berger, Rubens Barrachillo.
Initially the champions walked up to the Goodwood House steps, then up on to the balcony for interviews with Karun Chandhok ( Ex F1 driver, who is now a motorsport broadcaster and analyst for Sky Sports F1).
It gave a rare insight into some of the rivalry that occurred during previous F1 seasons, but altogether a very amusing occasion – all the champions seem to get on well together now. Don’t know what happened to Mr Hill….
And to end the day, a beautiful sunset back at the campsite.
Lots of racing on the Sunday, including the Timed Shootout near the end of the day for the fastest cars. The Timed Shootout is without doubt the most exhilarating part of the Festival of Speed. It’s a brief moment when the gloves come off and the drivers get just a little bit competitive in their bid to set the fastest time of the weekend. This year it was again hugely competitive, with several experienced hands returning to give it everything on the famous hill climb.
Romain Dumas (who took the spoils last year in the Ford Supervan 4.2) returned to try and retain his crown.
Well you won’t be surprised to find that the Ford Supertruck beast was quickest, with the Subaru Project Midnight a couple of seconds behind – a huge margin by FOS standards. That electric motor propelled truck sounded absolutely AWESOME !!!!
Well, as usual a fantastic few days out, I’m sure I’ve missed lot of things out. It’s virtually impossible to do the whole extravaganza, even in 4 days. However, the only thing I’d like to say in conclusion is to encourage you to go and enjoy ! It’s GREAT !!!!!!
