Goodwood Revival commentator Henry Hope-Frost picks his favourite 15 moments from this year’s surreal historic-racing extravaganza.
1 – JACKIE STEWART: GREAT SCOT
Fifty years after Sir Jackie Stewart tested a single-seater for the first time, a Cooper-BMC Formula 3 racer at Goodwood, Scotland’s racing knight and three-time F1 world champion was reunited with the very car and headed a large on-track gathering of machines from his incredible career. JYS’s sons Paul and Mark also drove their father’s 1969 title-winning Matra MS80 and ’73 world-beating Tyrrell 006 in an emotional Stewart family get-together.
2 – MASERATI’S MONZA MOMENT
Now a traditional visual treat for Revival visitors on arrival in the centre of the circuit, the ‘pit-garage recreation’ was this year dressed to resemble a scene from the 1954 Italian GP at Monza, complete with period signwriting and logos. A stunning array of front-engined Maseratis – all on show to help celebrate the Italian giant’s 100th birthday – was housed in each garage and audible “wows” could be heard all weekend as visitors came across another bit of attention to detail, Goodwood-style.
3 – DREAM-TEAM DEBATE
It was again an immense privilege and thrill to host and moderate the Credit Suisse Historic Racing Forum in the recently-restored Race Control building, now home to one of the event’s key sponsors. Motorsport legends Sir Stirling Moss, Derek Bell, Jochen Mass, Alain de Cadenet, as well as current F1 racer Max Chilton, made up the panel for a light-hearted debate on ‘dream teams’. To hear Moss on Mercedes and the British garagistes, Bell on Ferrari, Mass on Porsche, The Cad on his own Le Mans effort and Chilton on current F1 was truly captivating.
4 – FACE-TO-FACE WITH FANGIO’S 250F
For more years than he’d probably care to admit, Gary Pearson has been one of the most unflashy, unflustered and uber-successful historic racers and engineers. Little wonder then that he was charged with guiding Lukas Huni’s preposterously precious and valuable Maserati 250F around in the parade to mark the centenary of the Italian firm. The achingly beautiful machine is the very car used by Juan Manuel Fangio to score his 24th and final grand prix win at the Nurburgring in 1957. Which tells you everything you need to know.
“I’m a very lucky bloke,” Pearson admitted in typically unsmug fashion.
5 – DANCE TO JIM CLARK’S TUNE
The sight of long-standing Team Lotus mechanic Bob Dance, who fettled winners for Jim Clark, Mario Andretti and Ayrton Senna, leaning over a pristine, Classic Team Lotus-prepared, Climax-engined 25 in the collecting area ahead of the Glover Trophy for Formula 1 cars of the early-1960s was another stop-you-in-your-tracks moment. When vastly experienced racer Andy Middlehurst took his fourth straight win, I made sure Bob was at his side during our post-race Q+A.
“Today’s driving was of Jim Clark standard,” Dance said of Middlehurst’s effort. There is no more ringing an endorsement, surely?
6 – F1 DRIVER CATCHES THE FEVER
Max Chilton is a contemporary grand prix driver with a difference. Despite the 23-year-old busting his gut in F1 to finish near the back in a recalcitrant Marussia, he’s an affable, approachable and articulate young man who gets racing and admits to having the ‘fever’, unlike many of his adversaries caught up in that blinkered, self-important F1 trance. Max appreciates the history of the sport and is on a quest to learn more, so it was a shame when his Ford Mustang fell sick before he had a chance to sample some high-power-low-grip fun in the Shelby Cup V8 thrash.
“An amazing event which I highly recommend to everyone,” he enthused. Well done, Max, you’ve gained a whole new fanbase.
7 – SPORTSCAR ACES GO BACK IN TIME
Factory Aston Martin Racing duo Jamie Campbell-Walter and Darren Turner were entrusted with the biggest, boldest, loudest and fastest of any of the historic monsters at Goodwood: the bright-orange McLaren M20 Can-Am Powerwedge belonging to their AMR team-mate and collector of all things Gulf-liveried Roald Goethe. Part of the Jackie Stewart tribute (JYS tested it in 1972 but illness meant he never raced it) each day, the Chevy V8 leviathan meant a big box ticked for the British endurance aces’ portfolios.
“Is this fever?” JC-W asked me rhetorically as he climbed in.
“A real man’s car,” DT exclaimed, ashen-faced, after his Sunday run.
8 – BIG JOHN BACK IN A FERRARI
Goodwood is a special place for John Surtees. The very first car race – a Formula Junior scrap in 1960 – that the seven-time motorcycle world champion had ever seen took place there – and he was in it. Just four years later he was F1 world champion in a Ferrari. To see the trademark blue-and-white Surtees helmet back in the scarlet, 1.5-litre, V8 158 in which he achieved the unique double was quite something. The 80-year-old howled round in a demonstration run that reminded everyone why the Italians had nicknamed him ‘Il Grande John’.
9 – DUTCH DELIGHTS IN RAC TT
Dutch F1 racer Giedo van der Garde, currently Sauber’s reserve driver, had never seen the super-fast 2.4-mile Goodwood circuit and had only once before driven compatriot David Hart’s AC Cobra. But you wouldn’t have thought it if you’d seen him throw the twitchy V8 muscle car around to win the RAC TT Celebration race.
“That was only my second race with a roof over my head and the first time I’ve seen Goodwood, but it was great fun,” the former Renault 3.5 champion and GP2 race winner said after embracing Hart at the finish. “It’s a bit different from driving a Formula 1 car when you can brake so late. This one you have to dance into the corners!”
10 – A LE MANS LEGEND – IN A LE MANS LEGEND
Andy Wallace is the perfect advertisement for the myth that nice guys don’t win. The Le Mans legend, winner of the great race in 1988 aboard the Silk Cut Jaguar Group C XJR9-LM, was ready to do battle in another iconic La Sarthe machine: Nigel Webb’s D-type, 774 RW, winner of the tragic ’55 race. He took off his balaclava when I approached with mic and cameraman and smiled like a very rich kid in a very big sweetshop.
“Oh, thanks a lot mate!” he exclaimed when I reminded him just how famous and valuable the ex-Mike Hawthorn/Ivor Bueb car was. And with that he hussled the Jag to sixth in the Lavant Cup – a special race to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the slippery supercar.
11 – LUCKY STRIKE FOR REVIN’ KEVIN FANS
Remember those iconic 1980s images of the #34 Pepsi Suzuki RGV500 at impossible angles? Me, too. Which is why I’d always wanted to meet its rider, tall Texan Kevin Schwantz, whose exploits I followed avidly as a teenager. And here he was, right in front of me, giving full and enthusiastic answers to my slightly-star-struck questions in the collecting area ahead of his Revival debut. The 50-year-old former world champion raced Peter Bloor’s sole-remaining ex-Geoff Duke Norton 500 Featherbed – his first race on British soil for 20 years – with aplomb and racked up fifth overall. Still a class act.
12 – BIKE BOYS’ MID-RACE BANTER
Standing next to Superbike aces Steve Plater and Glen Richards in pitlane as their respective team-mates, Glen English and Scott Smart, banged shoulders aboard their 1953 Manx Norton 500s in a ferocious duel for second in the final few laps of the first Barry Sheene Memorial Trophy bike race was a joy. The two racers watched intently on the screen and ribbed one another with each passing manoeuvre. Good-humoured, gentlemanly, affectionate and a world away from the cut-throat business of their real jobs.
13 – BRACE OF BOMBERS
Not one but two AVRO Lancaster bombers graced the skies over the former site of RAF Westhampnett, whose perimeter road was to become the race track in 1948. With the World War 2 fighters – poster planes for several generations since the conflict – accompanied by a formation of Spitfires and Hurricanes, there was not a single pair of eyes not fixed firmly in their direction. And every camera and smart phone followed suit during the spellbinding display of British brawn.
14 – SALVADORI’S SUMMER SOLILOQUY
Arriving at Goodwood after a blast along fine rural blacktop astride my big KTM v-twin always gets me in the mood and this year the feeling of what was to come was heightened as I arrived under the bridge that separates the car park and the circuit boundary. The inscription ‘Give me Goodwood on a summer’s day and you can forget the rest of the world’, famously ushered in the circuit’s original heyday by Roy Salvadori, perfectly summed up the mood of the 150,000 who made the pilgrimage.
15 – UNEXPECTED CAN-AM PLEASURE
After a tigerish win in the Whitsun Trophy for pre-1966 sports-prototypes aboard his ex-Chris Amon McLaren M1B-Chevrolet Can-Am monster, McLaren Automotive’s road-car test and development driver Chris Goodwin took the usual plaudits at the finish line: a garland, a cigar and a chat with me. What he did next will stay with me forever.
“Get in, mate!” he said, looking at me, but surely not meaning me.
Nervously looking over both shoulders and finding no other takers, I realised he did mean me and climbed into the space next to Chris for his lap of honour. It was hot, cramped and loud – and as intoxicating as I’d hoped. The massive 5.4-litre Chevy V8 thumped against my shoulders and the spaceframe chassis flexed as Chris repeatedly booted the throttle and caught each slide for his appreciative audience inside and outside the car. With no helmet or belts, it was an assault on the senses the like of which I’ve never experienced.
Arriving in parc fermé red-faced and watery-eyed, I thanked Chris. “Cool, isn’t it?” he replied. “Shame you can’t sit there in a race…”
Thank god I’ve got photographic and video evidence of my impromptu treat. No-one would believe me otherwise.
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