CHICHESTER, England — The United States needs something like the Goodwood Festival of Speed. It is part racing event, part auto show, part Cars & Coffee and part family-friendly festival with more than a dollop of fancy, Champagne-soaked frivolity about, but it’s not a focus. Some car events on our fair shores come close, most obviously the multiple events of Monterey Car Week, but no single one of them can match the Festival of Speed. Ironically, they’re also more hoity toity and expensive to attend than the one hosted at the 11,000-acre estate of an English duke.
In other words, you should put it on your bucket list. To be honest, I still preferred the Goodwood Revival more, as the racing is more interesting and the all-enveloping immersion of the period-correct pageantry is the closest you can get to walking through time without worrying about killing your grandfather. I think it’d also be more fun for those who aren’t car people.
Still, for car people, the Festival of Speed is a better bet if their automotive tastes run to the more recent end of things. There are new cars, for one, represented in automaker-themed pavilions (that would be the auto show bit) and by those that make trips up the hill. The supercar runs are of particular interest since it seems very likely it’ll be your only chance to ever see some of them, period, let alone running at speed. Their future lives locked away in a storage facility next to a Monet are all but assured.
The Festival also seems like one of the best, easiest and economical ways to see F1 cars in action as well as see them up close in the paddock and catch a glimpse of drivers. Judging by the number of kids festooned in F1 team apparel, this seems like a very big deal. Seems like a fair guess that most of their parents can’t manage to pop down to Monaco or Spa with them. Basic admission to Goodwood only costs £63 or $81, with kids getting in for free. Never mind versus an F1 race, that’s a great deal considering how much it can cost to go to an amusement park these days.
Of course, Americans intrigued by this whole thing need to get over to England, which I’m pretty sure is cheaper than Monaco, but not nothing. If you were ever going to venture across the pond, though, doing so during the Festival of Speed is recommended. Want more proof? Join me on the grand photo dump below, in chronological order of my time over three days at the Festival.
Friday at Goodwood Festival of Speed
Touring the paddock and the Cartier concours
Above, you can see the small country cottage of the Duke of Richmond, where the Festival of Speed takes place every year. And every year, the patch of grass in the center of his circular gravel driveway is filled with a “Central Display” sculpture by Gerry Judah. It’s also sponsored, and therefore, we have MG being celebrated for 100 years! Not contiguous years, mind you, nor are today’s MGs anything remotely like the tiny roadsters you might remember (basically they’re Chinese-made EVs that are better than you might expect). Two red MG roadsters, one old and one new, are dangled at the ends of the sculpture. By what I heard from other attendees, this year’s Central Display was underwhelming.
The Duke meets the King. Richard Petty was honored at the Festival of Speed, and he let his son Kyle drive one of his famed #43 Superbirds throughout the weekend. Literally “let.” Kyle said his dad never lets him drive it.
Parents (and kids) will appreciate that “Cars” was indeed referenced by the announcers.
Moving over to the small concours organized for the event known as Cartier Style et Luxe. Oooh, fancy. I loved this Lamborghini Espada. Never was it easier to see out of a Lambo. Look at all that glass! This is actually one of only three with that glass roof. Bring a hat.
Now bring a beach ball! The adorable little Citroen Menari Plage. Plage means beach. Gotta love towel upholstery.
You know what we don’t get enough of any more? Wicker interiors.
Clearly there was a theme in this corner of the concours of beach cars. This one-off Ferrari is literally called the Beach Car. Probably really affordable.
Want to see cars you’ve never seen before nor will likely ever see again? Come on down. Behold, an Aston Martin Valkyrie just parked in a walkway. This thing is RIDICULOUS.
Come to ogle an orange Miura. Stay to admire the name badge font.
Bugatti Atalante in purple. If you were going to make off with a car to sell for the purposes of financing anything you’d damn-well like, this would be a good call.
Not to be confused with a Cadillac Allante.
Now moving to the paddock where you can see all the cars making their way up the hill, including new cars, classic race cars and modern F1 cars.
How can you not love this vintage Mercedes race car hauler? I think I’d rather have this than the car it’s hauling.
Gotta tell you right now, you’re not going to get much detail about the race cars here. Just took a handful of random pics. This one? Because it’s a purple and a Jaguar. I like those two things.
The King wasn’t the only NASCAR legend represented.
The theme of this year’s Festival of Speed was “Horseless to Hybrid: Revolutions in Power.” As such, the car chosen to lead the first parade run up the hill with the rest of the theme field was this … um, wingless airplane car. Weird. How’d this never catch on?
Then we have a coal/steam-powered carriage? You’ll be surprised to know that this thing’s hill climb number grossly underperformed relative the Ford Supervan.
Saturday at Goodwood Festival of Speed
New cars run up the hill
On my second day at Goodwood, I spent much of the time at a prime spot in turn 1 where I got a great shot of the cars starting their way up the hill during parade-like runs as well as practice runs for Sunday. This included a ton of super cars and drift cars, which I was taking videos of, so look to our social channels for that.
Lots of manufacturers bring new cars to the Festival of Speed. This includes a multitude of super cars and luxury cars, but this year, a whole heap of cars from Chinese brands. Those brands obviously pump a lot of money into the Festival. While the cars go by, there is an ongoing commentary over the loudspeakers and individual ear radios that pretty much sounds like the chit-chat that goes on during the Rose Bowl Parade. Clearly, Marge and Clive (I’m just guessing that’s what they were called) were instructed to say nice things about the “exciting” new Hongqis and Yangwangs.
The Hongqui EHS9.
The vast majority of these Chinese vehicles had some enormous ostentatious grille up front and a rear end that looked like that of another brand.
“Just lovely, Marge, so exciting.”
Another Hongqi. I can’t read what the plate says its called. By the way, it’s pronounced “Hong-chee” and not “honkey”
“You’re right Clive, so exciting and beautiful. But I think I prefer the Yangwang.”
Honestly, the most entertaining cars going past were those with lots of body roll. Fast stuff was boring. The people driving every Rolls at the Goodwood were HAULING. This is the first and only time I thought a Cullinan looked cool
Exhibit B
Exhibit C. Any more and that right front is lifting.
Exhibit D. The new EQG or whatever it’s officially called. Sadly, they did not do a tank turn in one of the several spots where the drift cars do their thing. Missed opportunity.
Whoever was driving the lifted, concept Ineos Grenadier Quartermaster (basically a Jeep Gladiator Mojave for those who think a Jeep Gladiator Mojave is too common) wisely decided not to push it too hard. If it had, it would’ve ended up on its door handles roughly 4 feet from where I was standing.
The new Genesis GV60 Magma (I dare you to not pronounce that like Dr Evil). It beat the new Porsche Taycan GT on Sunday up the hill climb, but that seemed to be as much about the Porsche being driven like the driver’s frail grandmother was aboard. Or possibly just by someone’s frail grandmother. Don’t know what that was about.
The new Alpine A290 electric hot hatch. This thing is cool, though basically a hotted-up Renault 5 (coming soon to a Paris near you).
The Auto Union Type 52 Schnellsportwagen that Audi recreated for the Festival of Speed. It was basically the RS 7 of its day. Which was a rather unfortunate bit of “day” it should be said.
And then it rained.
This is the new Defender 110 Octa, which packs a 628-hp V8. Looks like it should be shooting at James Bond.
The Ford Raptor T1+ definitely looked like it belonged. What a cool machine.
There were a number of modified Toyota GR Yarises at Goodwood. Sure seemed like they were perfect cars to hit the climb in the rain.
There is a robust manufacturer presence at the Festival, which basically serves as Britain’s new car auto show. BMW Group had four stands in total: Series, M, Mini and Rolls-Royce. All the new-and-notable stuff was here, including the Mini Aceman and next-gen BMW M5.
JLR also seemed to remove a shrine from the Temple of Karnak in Egypt for its display
Morgan was there, although you’d be excused for thinking this new-car manufacturer show stand was actually a classic car display. This is its three-wheeled Bluebird. Seems safe.
Over in the paddock, Honda was celebrating 45 years of the Prelude with this original example parked next to the new, hybrid Prelude Concept. Don’t think it’s a stretch to say the bookends aren’t the strongest in the line.
Hang onto your hat, Mr. The King. One legend gets a ride in another, the 108-year-old Fiat S76 ‘Beast of Turin’ that put-put-puts up the hill to cheers every time. It looks like a cartoon brought to life. As opposed to the car next to it, which is a real car brought to cartoon. Richard let Kyle drive the Superbird again, BTW.
Sunday at the Goodwood Festival of Speed
Hill climb shootout, more paddock tours
After plenty of rain and clouds the previous two days, weather on Sunday was beautiful. The Duke ditched the MG signs on his house. I would too.
I walked around the paddock and got some shots of some of the race cars. Again, this is hardly comprehensive, just what quickly caught my eye and I bothered to take a picture of.
The contrarian’s response to the question “Which Batmobile do you prefer?”
The late, great Niki Lauda was honored during the weekend. He drove this Ferrari.
Rally cars!
Rally cars driving through the paddock! This Quattro is WAAAAAAY louder than I was expecting.
I always loved how Mercedes managed to successfully graft production car styling cues onto this thing.
I can just picture Adam Driver talking to Shailene Woodley about this car right now.
There was an entire paddock row, front and back, devoted to Shadow racing. When someone said, “Hey look, a Shadow-Dodge” this is 100% NOT what I was expecting to see.
The totally craze-balls McMurtry Speirling, which uses fans to literally suck itself to the pavement. Its sub-40-second time up the hill climb still stands as the quickest ever, but also resulted in being banned from official timed runs as the FOS organizers felt that was just too fast and dangerous a pace for car makers to chase.
I got a chance to see it run up the hill. It really is crazy how fast it goes.
A view of the grandstands and BMW M pavilion next to the braking zone of the Molecomb corner.
I had a killer spot right at the entrance of the infamous Molecomb corner. My iPhone managed to catch a few of the cars in action.
This is a Nissan Skyline.
Wasn’t always perfect with my pic timing.
Have to be honest, I can’t really tell low-volume exotics apart. This is a thing of some sort.
This is mostly a good look at the entrance to the corner plus Photographer 100.
This was the view in the opposite direction. Specifically, seconds after Travis Pastrana narfed his Huckster into the hay bales.
That was the immediate aftermath. This was what immediately preceded it.
Oopsie
He was fine. Not so sure about the ego.
