Goodwood Festival of Speed

Earlier this month I visited the Goodwood Festival of Speed for the first time. I had resisted for a number of years, despite having been invited to accompany a friend on at least two occasions, imagining that an event on such a grand scale would make any sense of participation difficult and that it would dominated by contemporary cars only. There is no doubt that it is a big meeting and the crowds can feel overwhelming at times - especially in the paddock areas - but I was pleasantly surprised at how much motoring history was on display. There were many familiar cars to view and plenty of interesting machines tackling the 1.16 mile hill climb. Notable amongst these, for me at least, was the 1911 14.2 litre Fiat Grand Prix car and Vauxhall's very rare C-10 'Prince Henry', a car that I have seen many times down the road at Vauxhall Motors in Luton...
Always hugely impressive are the pre-war GP cars - the Bugattis (types 30, 35 and 59), the Alfas, especially the P3 Tipo B, the first successful centre-line single seater GP car, which won the Italian Grand Prix on its first outing, the Mercedes SSK and the Auto Union Type D, driven on this occasion by Pink Floyd drummer and friend of my father, Nick Mason.
It was also great to see a selection of classic endurance racers, cars that had competed in road races such as the Mille Miglia and Le Mans. There was an impressive looking 'Birdcage' Maserati (the nickname comes from its tubular space-frame made up of over 200 pieces), which was rather less pristine once it had hit the hay bales, as its driver lost control coming out of turn two...
It was also really good to see the Marcos XP Mantis of Ned Morris in the 'Grand Touring Greats' section of the event. This is a car that I saw for the first time last year at the Marcos 50th Anniversary celebration at Prescott and I had an opportunity this time to talk with Ned and his father and to discover, with some pleasure, that he has bought a copy of my Making my Marque documentary on the history of Marcos.

My 8 year old son and his best friend, along with his older brother and his best friend were with me for the day and their interests were geared very much towards the more contemporary machinery. The highlight of the day for them was getting close to last year's Formula 1 GP cars as well as seeing them - and more importantly hearing them - race up the hill. For the two older boys the pinnacle of the day came when they had an opportunity to shake Jenson Button by the hand and have him scribble an autograph for them. With a nod to the Dads, they also got Jackie Stewart to sign their yellow dunlop caps.

The Goodwood estate is huge and after 10 hours at the site in glorious but blazingly hot sunshine, I can confirm that I was absolutely shattered; however, it was a great day and I had seen cars dating from 1902 right up to the very latest concepts, including this rather pretty take on the Mazda MX-5 (my daily transport). So having been something of a sceptic, I have been converted and I am already looking forward to next year's event...