Goodwood: How fast is fast?

It has often been said that with a very fast road car, favourable conditions and a flying start, a handy driver can navigate Goodwood Motor Circuit’s six flowing corners (and its one fiddly chicane) in one and a half minutes. Several years ago, The Intercooler’s own Andrew Frankel frightened himself half to death chasing a lap time around the place in an Aston Martin V12 Vantage. He went a handful of seconds faster than that.

Well, we may now have to reconsider what counts as fast around there. Last week, tiny Liverpool marque BAC announced that its Mono R had (unofficially) broken the road car lap record at Goodwood with Oli Webb at the wheel. The 30-year-old Brit, who races LMP1 cars on weekends, hustled a road tyre-shod Mono R around the track’s 2.4 miles in 1min 15.03sec. That’s outrageously quick. But when I spoke to Webb, he told me there was plenty more to come.