Features
Back to Library >
I Witnessed: The first Goodwood Revival
4 years ago
A low-flying Spitfire made for quite the spectacle
Of course the Festival of Speed was already well established, in its fifth year no less, but we all knew it had been created merely to pave the way for the reopening of the track and bring at least some level of competitive motorsport to the Goodwood Estate while plans for the circuit were made, approved and executed.
I’d been down to the circuit several times during its resurrection, and seen it transformed from a near derelict track used for occasional track days, into an immaculate re-imagining of its former self. Once done you could sit in a grandstand, look around and see almost nothing that couldn’t have been there on 2 July, 1966, the last time cars had raced competitively there. It was a time warp.
But his Lordship had made a mistake and I knew it. It was fine to provide such a wonderful and period-correct stage, but you could hardly expect those who were to play upon it – the general public – to turn up in costume too. But that was what he was insisting: if you wanted to be seen in the paddock you needed to be dressed in clothing from Goodwood’s heyday, or at the very least a jacket and tie, or a summer dress. It was simply too much to ask or expect.
And I knew I was right, up to the moment I was proven spectacularly wrong. Then as now, everyone entered into the Goodwood spirit, creating a pageant of fashion as valued as anything that happens on the track.
"Then as now, everyone entered into the Goodwood spirit, creating a pageant of fashion as valued as anything that happens on the track"
Then just to add to the spirit of the occasion, a very great man called Ray Hanna flew a Spitfire down the pit straight at what was later described to me as ‘prop height’. I was in the pits at the time and could barely believe what I was seeing, but then a few days later someone sent me a photograph taken from the grandstand actually looking down on the aircraft, promptly followed by a call from Hanna begging me not to publish it as he was already in more than enough trouble with the CAA as it was.
I had turned down an invitation from His Lordship to play in the traditional pre-race weekend cricket match at Goodwood House on account of the fact I can neither catch nor throw, but still decided to enter into the Goodwood spirit as much as I could. I was down to drive Frank Sytner’s gorgeous Frazer-Nash Sebring in the Freddie March Memorial Trophy, so I climbed into some tweeds, collected the car from London and drove it to Goodwood, pausing in Chiddingfold for a pint and a Ploughman’s on the green (only one, promise) before continuing to Goodwood. It was wonderful.
The race was less so. After I’d sprinted across the track I managed not to get my lower limbs tangled in the pedals and made a respectable getaway, but I’d been told the car had been an exhibit for years, had just been dusted off for Goodwood and not to expect too much of it. And so it proved. I was just getting into the rhythm of the race when the needle of the water temperature gauge started to race around the dial. As predicted, the elderly ossified head gasket had given way under the strain of racing. It would be the first of three consecutive DNFs for me at Goodwood.
"This was no theatrical production, a pantomime merely mimicking the past. For the driver it was the same. So I got to race on a track that was no different to that raced on by Fangio, Stirling and Jimmy Clark"
But not even that could put a dampener on this most extraordinary event. Of course historic racing was around long before the Revival, but came in the form either of little club meetings or a few big festivals held at modern concrete circuits. And then came Goodwood.
But from a driver’s perspective, even that was secondary. Yes it was beautiful, yes the track was a fabulous challenge to drive but there was something else too. There that day was an old family friend called Michael Salmon, veteran of over a dozen Le Mans who had raced at Goodwood right through the 1950s and 1960s. When the Le Mans organisers installed chicanes on the Mulsanne he refused ever to go there again. Michael was old school. So I asked him what the track was like compared to how it had been in his day. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘What’s it like? It’s the same. Exactly the same. Nothing has changed at all.’
And it was that more than anything that did it for me. For this was no theatrical production, a pantomime merely mimicking the past. For the driver it was the same. So I got to race on a track that was no different to that raced on by Fangio, Stirling and Jimmy Clark. I’ve been going back for nearly quarter of a century, to do photoshoots, track days, demonstrations and, when I’m very lucky, race; and that’s what always gets me when I go there and always will. It is the magic and mystique of Goodwood and it is unique.
