The Goodwood Revival continues to be one of the largest and most ambitious classic car events in the world.
Here is part 1 of our 2-part reflection on the highlights of this year’s Goodwood Revival, the 25th, to have run since it started in 1998.
The Goodwood Revival track opened was opened each day by a parade of Meyers Manx derived Beach Buggies, celebrating the car’s 60th birthday, led by Richard Gauntlett (son of Victor) driving track owner the Duke of Richmond and Gordon.
With nearly 100 beach buggies on track the site sounds and smells of these mainly air-cooled machines was a direct, it was quite a sight, and sound, even in the rain.
Incredibly the second car in the Goodwood Revival parade was the actual vehicle used in the Thomas Crown Affair film, probably the most famous beach Buggy in the world. Steve McQueen was very hands on with design of this Pete Condos-built buggy. The faired in lights reflected contemporary sports cars he’d owned, such as his Ferrari 275 or Jaguar XKSS. The Torq Thrust alloys are a nod to the muscle cars it could outrun because it weighed less than a 1000Lb, which allowed the 230bhp Chevrolet Corvair air-cooled flat-six shoehorned in the back to push this unique car along at quite a rate. McQueen apparently had a ball driving it in that famous scene in the film and we can well believe that. It’s typical of Goodwood Revival to feature such a machine, it’s not just about D-types and 250Fs!
The weather wasn’t conducive to Beach Buggies, however, with very heavy rain adding an element of chance all weekend. Tom Waterfield (60) splashed his way to victory in foreshortened Earl of March Trophy on Sunday morning driving his 1957 Cooper-Norton MkVIII ahead of George Shackleton’s 1957 Cooper-Norton MkXI in 2nd (23), Andrew Turner’s 1955 Cooper-Jap in 3rd (86) and Michael Russell’s 1959 Heizer -JAP Mk1 (68).
This made it very hard for the competitors in the Barry Sheen memorial trophy, especially for the older bikes such as this 1928 BMW R63 Kompressor (supercharged), which was ridden with great flair by mullet-sporting Davey Todd, winner of this year’s Senior Ilse of Man TT, and BMW stalwart Herbert Schwab. Their second place in race 2 in a field of 30 mostly post-war bikes was impressive but their pole position, scored during the very wet practice session, was almost unbelievable.
Michael Rutter and Michael Russell (68) on their 1954 Norton Velocette MSS took victory in both races however, followed in race 1 by Dan Jackson and James Hillier (38) on a 1954 Matchless G80, who were also second on the aggregate result of both races.
TT legend John McGuiness shared a 1957 Manx Norton with Barry Burrell, and you can clearly see the concentration needed to race bikes on a damp but still very fast and flowing Goodwood track.
This year’s Goodwood Revival celebrated John Surtees’ career, 60 years after he clinched the F1 Championship in a Ferrari. The only man to win world championships on two wheels and four, Surtees was a regular at Goodwood and great supporter of the early Festival of Speed. After a tribute from The Duke of Richmond and Gordon it was led by a winning MV Augusta and a Ferrari 1512; perhaps the first-time motorcycles and cars have taken part in the same parade at the Revival.
It also reminded the crowd of his success in Can-Am Championship, he won the inaugural 1966 season in a Chevy V8-powered Lola T70 and that he actually started his 4-wheeled career with Lotus. But for an argument with works driver Innes Ireland over his Lotus status, which he chose to walk away from, he may have been Jim Clark’s teammate at Lotus. In actual fact he drove Coopers for a couple of years before joining Ferrari in 1963. He was one of the great talents of motorsport and a very able mechanic and engineer who had a real feel for the machinery he was racing.
He took the F1 Championship in 1964 driving a Ferrari in the unfamiliar blue and white livery Luigi Chinetti’s North American Racing Team, or NART as its often called, because Enzo Ferrari had got into a dispute with organisers and withdrawn his official factory entry.
‘Il Grande John’, as the Italian Tifosi called him, left Ferrari in 1966 after making an iron-willed recovery from serious injuries sustained in his own Lola T70 sports car in practice for a race at the Mosport Park circuit, near Toronto. His position at Ferrari had been undermined by his absence and the Machiavellian actions of team manager, Eugenio Dragoni. Despite winning the Belgian Grand Prix with the new 3-litre V12 tipo 312, he eventually left the team after a row over the driver pairings for the Le Mans 24-hour sports car race. After various issues driving for Honda (for whom he scored his last F1 win), BRM, and Cooper he created his team in 1970 building an F1 car. The car in which Team Surtees scored their greatest success, however, was the Matchbox model’s sponsored Surtees TS10, a beautifully built machine powered by Brian Hart-built Ford BDA engines, which allowed fellow motorcycle champion Mike Hailwood to take the 1972 F2 Championship.
It’s perhaps not fair that one of the things Team Surtees will be most remembered for is their sponsorship deal with the London Rubber Company that resulted in one of their cars wearing the logo of Durex, and which got them banned from the BBC. That of course created an enormous amount of publicity.
The Duke completed the Surtees parade driving Big John’s own 1957 BMW 503 3.2 V8 Cabriolet. Designed by Count Albrecht von Goertz, formerly of the Studebaker studio, the 503 was created to appeal primarily to the lucrative US market. One of only three right-hand drive cabriolets produced, it was originally ordered for and delivered to Mrs Aldington, of the family that owned AFN Ltd of Isleworth, the BMW importer of the period.
Surtees made his four-wheeled debut in a Formula Junior Cooper, racing for Ken Tyrrell, at the 39th Members’ Meeting in March 1960, finishing a close second to none other than Jim Clark. Team Surtees never quite managed to win an F1 GP, however, and one of the reasons was the success of the Tyrrell Racing Organization who batted above their weight in F1 from their initial entry with a Cosworth DFV-powered Matra in 1968, and throughout the 1970s. Three World Championships for Jackie Stewart in cars penned by designer Derek Gardner are maybe what they are best remembered for but the story of Tyrrell is much more multifaceted than that. The fact they worked out of a small wooden shed in the family timber business is remarkable and when it was under threat of being demolished the Duke of Richmond and Gordon decided to rescue it and bring it to Goodwood to be preserved. Jackie Stewart first attracted Ken Tyrrell’s attention during a test at Goodwood so the international success really had its root a the circuit. The shed has now been properly erected and has some of the original equipment in it plus two Tyrrell F1 cars which attracted a busy line of people eager to experience this piece of history.
The slippery wet/dry nature of the weekend caused fewer incidents on track than might have been expected because drivers were taking care, having been briefed to do so. It wasn’t incident free though, as this picture from the Fordwater Trophy exemplifies. Despite the fact it looks inevitable, none of the 5 cars in this picture actually made contact with each other, although the Tom Pead’s Porsche 356 came to a complete stop.
The battle for the win was an enthralling race-long tussle, between Marc Gordon’s Jaguar XK150 FHC and Tim Crighton’s less powerful but more nimble Austin Healey 100/6. The pair swapped places multiple times on each lap, teetering on the edge of adhesion but a red flag ended the race early and, although the Healey was leading at the moment it came out, the Jaguar was given the win on the full-lap countback.
The big capacity V8s of the fearsome Whitsun Trophy cars, shook the ground as they entered the first corner. The race, for Protypes made between 1960 and 1966 is always a crowd favourite and the fastest race of the weekend. Pol sitter James Davison had flung his 1966 McLaren-Chevrolet M1B around Goodwood sideways as if it were Mk1 Escort rally car during practice, and scored fastest lap in the race by doing much the same thing, but sadly retired after an adventurous race.
Leaving victory to Oliver Brynt 1966 Lola-Chevrolet T70 Spyder.
F1 legend Adrian Newey finished a creditable 7th in his own GT40, and was the first of several GT40s across the line.
