This year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed took place once again in the beautiful grounds of Goodwood House in West Sussex earlier this month over the weekend of 10th to 13th July, offering an intoxicating four days of unrestricted access to motorsport glamour, legendary drivers from the past and present and new car launches, as cars and motorbikes of all shapes and sizes blasted their way up the Goodwood Hill.
This year’s festival saw the largest collection of Formula 1 cars ever seen at Goodwood along with a record number of ex-Formula 1 drivers getting behind the wheel of their old F1 cars to do the hill climb, in celebration of 75 years of the Formula 1 World Championship.
Given its unique position in global motorsport, Goodwood was well placed to curate this definitive celebration of Formula 1’s history, bringing together many of the sport’s biggest names from today and yesteryear to present the sport’s landmark anniversary in the best possible way.
Formula 1 very much took centre stage at this year’s event, as drivers, teams, cars and a record number of spectators descended on the Goodwood Estate in the glorious July sunshine to pay tribute to the sports many achievements over the last 75 years which have seen 34 drivers claiming the Formula 1 Drivers’ Championship and 15 teams winning the Constructors’ title since its inauguration back in 1958.
And on Saturday afternoon a reception took place on the balcony of Goodwood House to mark the 75th anniversary with seven Formula 1 Champions who represented four decades of the sport and between them won 14 World Championships. They included Sir Jackie Stewart who won his first title back in 1969, two champions of the 1970s, Emerson Fittipaldi and Mario Andretti, 1997 Drivers’ Champion Jacques Villeneuve, who was joined by Nigel Mansell, Mika Häkkinen and four-time Formula 1 World Champion Alain Prost.
As well as celebrating 75 years of the Formula 1 World Championship, this year’s Festival of Speed also celebrated Gordon Murray’s remarkable 60-year career of designing cars. The high point being on the Friday afternoon when all of Murray’s cars were parked up on the turning circle in front of Goodwood House, surrounding the spectacular mermaid-inspired Central Feature.
This year, the 1.16-mile Hill was tackled by many a champion along with a wide range of cars. From the early years of motoring right through to electric cars of today. In fact, over 80 cars made their way up the Goodwood Hill, including Paul Stewart in a 1971 Tyrrell Cosworth, Emerson Fittipaldi in a 1979 Lotus Cosworth 72E, Alain Prost in his 1988 McLaren MP4/4 and David Coulthard in a Red Bull Racing Renault RB7, to name just a few.
And this year, the festival’s main paddock, which normally includes the F1 Pit Lane, was redesigned to accommodate the Formula 1 takeover, transforming the central area of the Festival of Speed into a hive of F1 activity.
It was however, still an entirely accessible area of the event, which is an important feature of the festival, so visitors can get up close and personal to the cars and drivers.
For fans of road cars, there were also plenty of debuts and a wide array of supercars on display. And, as has become common place at the Festival of Speed, lots of rubber was burnt by drifters, as well as motorcycles and plenty more to keep everyone happy.
On Sunday, the festival rounded off four days of spectacular motoring history and events with the now traditional and ever popular Timed Shoot-Out. This is when the drivers get competitive and try to set the fastest time of the weekend on Goodwood’s famous Hillclimb. Last year Romain Dumas posted the fastest time in the 1,400PS (1,050kW) Ford Supervan 4.2 with a final time of 43.99 seconds. He returned this year and managed to retain his crown beating his time last year by 0.7 seconds in the Ford Supertruck.
For those of you who missed this year’s event, next year, Goodwood Festival of Speed will take place between 9th and 12th July 2026. For more information please visit: www.goodwood.com.
Author Bio:
Simon Burrell is a UK-based motoring and travel journalist and editor, a member of the Guild of Motoring Writers and former saloon car racing driver.
Photographs by Gary Harman
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