Goodwood Festival of Speed, 2019

The 2019 Goodwood Festival of Speed was as it always is: different in detail.

What I love about it is the fact that you can wander around the cars as they are on display – with a few exceptions – and wander around them when they are on the move. The sound, reverberating off the other cars, doesn’t quite come out on the video, so all the more reason to turn up one year.

A word of warning: I turned up for one year, the first as it happens, and have returned well over half of those that remained.

When I heard that the original GFoS was on, some 26 years ago I’m shocked to say, with all the coverage in the motoring press, I knew it would be big. I asked Chichester division (I was a police officer in those days, in Sussex) what they were putting out to cope. When I heard how few, I phoned the deputy head of Chichester and told him that he was, perhaps, underestimating the turnout. I was wrong, I was told.

It was hovoc around Goodwood. I saw the deputy some time later and he refused to speak with me, allowing himself eye-contact for a brief second.

It was big. I was excited by it. I went and got stuck in traffic. I parked on a verge, after asking permission of the only PC on point I saw. He just shrugged. By the time I’d got out of the car and crossed the road, there were another half a dozen cars parked around mine.

There was a great range of cars, from tin tops to the big bangers of the early 1900s. And lots of lovely, loud motorbikes.

The image of the FIAT record breaker passing within a few feet of me will stay for years, probably longer than I will.

Enjoy.

You might guess that I’ve got some new videoing editing software, PowerDirector, so I’ve been trying out some of the gubbins it comes with.

I’ll add some images over the weekend.

Below we see a 1922 Bentley 3 litre Le Mans. It belonged to a lovely Australian family who used it, on occasion, to go shopping. I say ‘a’ Bentley, but possibly it should be ‘the’. There is a degree of argument about what it did and when. See: https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/march-1988/44/veteran-classic

I refuse to comment. But it was nice to meet such a friendly family, only too willing to chat with an old, fat nerd.

If one Bentley is great, then how about a selection

There were also the classic Mercedes that are such a feature of Goodwood.

The 300SLR looked, at first sight, as if it was the moss/Jenkinson winner as it had twin fairings behind the headrests, but the 704 gave it away. Moss’ number was 722, and this interloper was Hans Hermann’s.

Should anyone be wondering what to buy me for Christmas . . .