Goodwood Festival of Speed
The Goodwood Festival of Speed once again showed off some of the fastest and newest cars on the market
From June 23rd to 26th, one of the biggest motorsport events occurred at the Goodwood House in West Sussex, New England. The Goodwood Festival of Speed, an annual event, features many timed races, allowing companies to show off their newest cars. This year’s festival featured cars like the Mercedes AMG One, the Ferrari Daytona SP3, and the Ford Pro Electric SuperVan. Throughout its history, the festival has had many types of races, most only being in the festival for a few years. However, the one consistent race is the hill climb. The Hillclimb is about a one-mile race with a 0.2-mile climb, giving it a 4.9% gradient. This race features hundreds of cars over the three days, allowing hobbyists to compete with industries to try to get the fastest time.
History
The Goodwood Festival of Speed was founded by Lord March in 1993 to try to bring motor racing back to the Goodwood estate. The first festival included a small selection of historic vehicles and drew a crowd of 25,000 people despite clashing with Le Mans that year. After the second event also clashed with Le Mans, Lord March ensured that the event would never coincide with Le Mans or Formula One races. In 1994, the event extended from a 1-day Sunday event to a 2-day Saturday-Sunday weekend event. Then, in 1996, the event grew to 3 days, Friday-Saturday-Sunday.
Over the years of the festival, many races have come. Some, like the Forest Rally Stage, introduced in 2005, have continued to the present-day events. Others, like the Soapbox challenge, only appeared for a few years. For the most part, though, the Festival has continued to include more events including:
The Michelin Supercar Paddock (added in 2000)
The Arena (added in 2019)
The Future Lab (added in 2017)
The Cartier Style et Luxe (added in 1995)
The Moving Motor Show (added in 2010)
New Records!!!
At this year’s Festival, the McMurty Speirling broke the all-time record for the Hillclimb, completing it in just 39.081 seconds. To put that in perspective, the second-fastest time in this year’s climb was 45.50 seconds! The record breaks the previous record of 41.6 seconds, set by Nick Heidfeld in 1999 in a McLaren F1 car. For safety reasons, F1 cars can no longer do official timed runs in the race.
Another record-breaker this year was the Lucid's Air Grand Touring Performance sedan, which took the title of fastest production car with a time of 50.79 seconds.