2015 Goodwood Festival Of Speed: Passion For The Automobile Is Still Strong
I was expecting to be impressed by this annual British hillclimb event during my first-ever visit to the Goodwood Estate. Instead, I was blown away by the sheer madness of it all.
After all, shouldn’t the celebration of speed as well as powerfully loud cars and motorbikes be considered politically incorrect nonsense? Yes. But the Goodwood Festival of Speed is a middle finger to social responsibility, at least during one weekend a year.
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As a form of motorsport event, hillclimbs have been around for more than a century in Europe. It’s pretty simple, actually; drivers race up an elevating, winding road and try to record the fastest time. At Goodwood, however, not everyone was climbing up the estate with the pedal to the metal, and for good reason.
Every year a mind-boggling roundup of cars, trucks and motorbikes appear at the Festival of Speed, and most of them climb the hill in front of thousands – make that tens of thousands – of friendly, cheery spectators.
Private car collectors bring their prized possessions, manufacturers unload their sports cars off of trailers, and famous drivers of today and yesteryear participate in the event, too. Porsche, Ferrari, McLaren, Lotus, Chevrolet, Ford, Bentley, Koenigsegg, Aston Martin, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi and Toyota – to name a few – are all part of the Goodwood celebration.
As a connoisseur of fine automotive machinery – ok, as a car nut – who was attending the Festival of Speed for the first time, I was overwhelmed. My first hour was spent trying to figure out how I’d manage to get through the day without running out of batteries, memory cards and breath. There are a lot of things going on at once, and every time I turned my back to the track, some uber-powerful car blew by and I missed it. Then again, there are so many spectators along the fences that unless you’re standing on some sort of elevation, you won’t see much. Buying a ticket to sit in the grandstands is a worthwhile expense, unlike the T-shirt I bought as a souvenir; I had no idea a British pound currently amounts to two Canadian dollars.
As you walk through the paddocks where the various cars come and go, the smell of unburned gasoline, shredded tires and overworked clutches fills the air – a perfectly scented bouquet for gearheads. To make sure everyone has something to drool over, all kinds of cars, trucks and bikes are on display or burning up the hill. Rally cars, Group B and Group C racers, F1 racers, NASCAR stock cars, drift cars, endurance cars, racing bikes, Baja trucks, supercars and concepts. Some brand-spanking new machines even make some of their first public appearances at Goodwood, such as the Porsche Boxster Spyder and the Aston Martin Lagonda Taraf.
The Festival of Speed’s theme this year, titled “Flat-out and fearless: racing on the edge,” celebrates some of the most spectacular drivers and moments in racing history. Visitors even got treated to a few magic moments, such as Sir Stirling Moss climbing the hill in a Mercedes-Benz W196 and Jackie Stewart doing the same in a W196 Streamliner. Richard Petty in his famous sky-blue 1970 Plymouth Superbird. Ken Block smoking the crowd in his 845-hp Ford Mustang Hoonicorn beast. Valentino Rossi on his 2015 Yamaha YZR-M1 MotoGP bike. A Nissan JUKE NISMO that made its way up the hill entirely on two wheels. I could go on.
Alas, the Festival of Speed is also a theatre of crashes, breakdowns and fireballs. Like when driver Patrick Friesacher’s Toyota Camry NASCAR burst into flames while he was entertaining the crowd by performing a massive burnout, then promptly raced up the hill in a cloud of pink smoke. That admittedly looked mildly staged. Probably less intentional was a 1989 Mazda 767B racer, a Jaguar XJR RRV, a Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo and a Toyota Tundra NASCAR truck that crashed during the hillclimb. Tough on the budget, tougher on the ego.
I could go on and on about the Goodwood Festival of Speed, but that would be pointless. If you’re planning on taking a vacation in Europe next summer, you might want to consider England, because this event should be ticked off any automotive enthusiast’s bucket list. I finally just scratched it off mine.