The Goodwood Festival of Speed is one of the world’s top annual motorsports events, featuring modern and historic racing cars and bikes taking part in a hill climb and other events, at Goodwood House, West Sussex, England in late June or early July.
The festival was founded in 1993 by Lord March, later to become known as Duke of Richmond, who wanted to bring back motor racing to the Goodwood Circuit but didn’t have the necessary permit to host a race there, so instead he hosted it on his own grounds.
The first event consisting of a small group of invited historic vehicles was a success, with a crowd of 25,000 people attending despite a date clash with the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Then when the second Festival also clashed with Le Mans, Lord March declared that the event would never be allowed to clash with either Le Mans or Formula One races again. This has certainly contributed to its ongoing success, and it can be said that there is no other automotive event in the world that comes close to the Goodwood’s variety, intensity, and sheer scale. In fact, some say you can spend all your time walking around the carpark admiring very special cars.
Each year the festival has a theme, and this year it was ‘Horseless to Hybrids’, showcasing the technological advancements in the motorsport arena over the last 130 years. Some manufacturers take the opportunity to launch new cars and concepts, while the likes of Red Bull used it as an opportunity to celebrate the 20th anniversary of being in Formula 1, taking over the entire Cathedral Paddock.
The Paddock also provided the ideal stage for the long-awaited public launch of the track-only Red Bull hypercar, the RB17. Created by Adrian Newey, the RB17 has a two-seater carbon fibre monocoque chassis with a semi-stressed mid mounted naturally aspirated V10 engine that is red lined at 15,000 rpm. The power is transferred to the rear wheels via a carbon fibre gearbox, it weighs under 900 kg and with more than 1,200 HP, the RB17 delivers F1-equivalent lap times and top speeds in excess of 350 km/h.
According to the Red Bull publicity machine, the RB17 will match F1 car lap times in the hands of a capable driver, so one has to ask, how do you launch such a car? Well, this is how Red Bull did it:
World Debut of the Red Bull RB17 Hypercar at Goodwood 2024 – Scoot Supercars
Whilst on Goodwood Festival of Speed, Porsche used this year’s hill climb as the place for Mark Webber to showcase their new GTS 911 Hybrid which was released in May in a relatively unique way:
Porsche GTS 911 Hybrid at Goodwood 2024 – Carwow
Apparently one of the main rules at the Goodwood Festival of Speed is that you’re not to crash.
Over the Festivals history there has only been two fatal accidents, the first at the inaugural 1993 event when vintage racing motorcyclist Chas Guy was killed in practice when his Vincent motorcycle developed a steering wobble throwing him into a tree. Since then, motorcycles are not timed for their run.
The other was in 2000 when driver John Dawson-Damer lost control of his Lotus 63, and crashed into the finish line gantry, killing himself and a marshal.
Thankfully this year there were no serious accidents, however some failed to read the ‘no crash’ email, one being the driver of the one-off Lotus Evija X electric hypercar:
One-off Lotus Evija X crash at Goodwood 2024 – Auto Media
As the commentator in the above video quite rightly mentioned, the reason for the Evija incident wasn’t so much driver error but more so computer software malfunction as this carthrottle.com article explains:
Loss of Control Blamed for Evija X Goodwood Crash – carthrottle.com
To me the highlight of Goodwood Festival of Speed is the action on the hill climb and over the four days there are some amazing pieces of machinery that deliver great entertainment and very quick times. The current record was set in 2022 when British driver Max Chiltern set an amazing time of 39.08 seconds in McMurtry Spéirling all electric hyper car.
This year the top 10 finalists for the Goodwood Festival of Speed Hillclimb crown included WRC machines, time attack creations, Formula 5000 cars, classic touring cars and even a van! Drivers like Romain Dumas, Travis Pastrana, Scott Speed and Jake Hill were behind the wheels of various cars, and this is how they performed:
Top 10 Fastest cars at the Festival of Speed 2024 – Goodwood Road & Racing
If you’re like me in that the Goodwood Festival of Speed is on the bucket list, you might like to pencil 10-13 July 2025 and hopefully I’ll see you there!!!!