Goodwood Festival Of Speed - Event Coverage

We bitch about the $3 gallon of gas but can you imagine paying $8? In a country where the sales tax is 17.5%, the roads are narrower than a Cadillac and there's a traffic circle every fifty feet. Oh, and every other fifty feet there's a cop camera photographing yo ass and mailing you a speeding ticket. Have a nice day!

With all that you'd need a really good reason to visit Great Britain, right? Well, the annual Goodwood Festival of Speed is a really, really good reason. (There are obviously others! - Ed)

Now in its thirteenth year, the Festival is a must-see for at least 150,000 people from all over the world. And they're attracted by the world's finest array of performance and race cars - everything from Sir Stirling Moss' 1955 Mille Miglia winning Mercedes 300 SLR to, well, some of the rarest Porsche race cars on the planet. Oh, and if that's not enough, you'll see ancient and modern F1 cars as well as rally cars through the ages. But what are they all doing?

It's all centered around the stately home of the Earl of March in Goodwood, Sussex. This is where his grandfather converted a World War II airfield into a race track in 1948. there's also a horse race track nearby and the new "underground" Rolls Royce factory. However, the Festival of Speed takes place on the Earl's driveway: it's a 1.16 mile hillclimb past his manor house and the Festival brings together the creme de la creme of world motorsport.

Nick Heidfeld in a McLaren/Mercedes MP4/13 holds the course record, unbeaten since 1999. He covered the narrow driveway in an amazing 41.6sec. Sadly, a few accidents, some fatal, have caused his Lordship to hold down the speeds of late, so the F1 cars entertain the crowds with burnouts instead.

Spectators are able to get really close to the action - really close. In fact, you're a few straw bales away from touching history, but the really cool thing about Goodwood is the open paddocks, where you can walk right up to multi-million dollar Ferraris and literally kick the tires (although it's not recommended). You can also talk to the drivers and get sensible answers - truly amazing considering the throng of people. In fact, we don't know of another event where you can get up so close and personal with so many household names.

The 2005 Festival theme was "Racing Colours - National Pride and Culture." There's a different theme every year and a featured auto maker. This year Honda topped the bill, with an amazingly expensive display of Formula One cars suspended in midair. However, it was the Euros that made the event for me. There were some incredible cars from BMW, Ferrari, Mercedes, Porsche, etc. The flat-8 Porsche 804 from 1962 gave Porsche its only F1 championship win with Dan Gurney utilizing its unique braking system at Rouen. From the same stable was the 1960 718 ably driven up the hill by Lord Charles March himself - hey, it's his driveway! Originally intended for Formula 2, a rule change put the 718 in F1 where it proved to be the first effective air-cooled Grand Prix car.

Not only have I seen the legendary Derek Bell race at Le Mans but I've ridden with him in a Porsche 962 at Silverstone. Nevertheless, I always get a buzz seeing the seven-time Le Mans winner, and here he was with both the first works 956 and the last works 962. The former was driven by Murray Smith, the latter by Henry Pearman (who owned both cars, damn him!)

BMW also has a legendary motorsport pedigree and two of my Goodwood favorites were the 2003 M3 GTR and the McLaren-BMW F1 GTR Le Mans car. The former was a lightweight design for the American Le Mans series, where it killed all comers, winning the team championship, the manufacturer's title and, for Jorg Muller, the driver's crown. The 1997 McLaren F1 car was the long-tail Le Mans version which, while it didn't win, certainly looked like it cudda, shudda.