Festival of Speed – Page 2 – I Watch Too Much Racing

Goodwood 2010: Wrap-Up

In this final instalment of my Goodwood round-up I’m going to cover some of the trackside action as well as some of the ‘names’ I bumped into over the day. I particularly like the video at the end.

There are several ways to do Goodwood. The organisers want you to spend a weekend ambling around in a relaxed ‘garden party’ atmosphere. This is very appealing and you can do that if you ‘re only there for a single day as I was but you would miss out on a lot, so I was moving quickly all day darting from place to place and revisiting areas based on the programme of events. Even so, I didn’t make it far up the hill and so missed the dedicated rally section completely.

I arrived at the site at about 11am, watched for a while near the entrance before heading to the Cathedral Paddock and the F1 Paddock.

I exited the paddock on the far side, going uphill, to see what was there. The answer: not much. A couple of WRC and GT trucks and the McLaren and (deafening) Red Bull Racing merchandise stands, both over-priced as always. I knew the modern F1 cars were not far off running again so they’d be in the paddock collecting area soon, so I headed there.
Continue reading “Goodwood 2010: Wrap-Up”

Goodwood: Video Special

I want to share a few of the videos I recorded during my day at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, before I write up my final instalment (yes late, I know). I spent a bit of time playing around with videos after trying and failing to take photos of moving cars through the small gaps in the crowd.

Here are the unedited results – they aren’t really good enough for the write-up posts because some are short and the camerawork is not steady, but equally they really are worth sharing because firstly there are some good car/driver combinations, and more importantly they get across the actual experience of being there. If you are looking with your own eyes it is the same as with the camera, you sometimes only get glimpses as the car passes faster or slower than expected or you don’t know it is there at all. That, and the sights and sounds are fantastic at Goodwood so the more chances to show that off, the better!

So I was finishing up my walk around the paddock when a truck drove by with a band on it.

I’d then moved to the small sheltered area between the collection area and the pedestrian bridge to watch the F1 cars leave the paddock. It wasn’t quite as good a vantage point as I’d hoped and then I’d got bored of the gaps between cars, but it was great fun to guess what was coming next.

A little later I was trackside between the main paddock and the next corner, on the paddock side of the track (drivers’ left). This is a McLaren Can-Am – what a noise.

I mentioned the NASCAR presence before, and like many American stars they were keen to put on a show. This is Mike Skinner peforming a mile-long burnout on the entire course! Despite the gentle rarified ‘garden party’ atmosphere of the place, sometimes you do need a bit of agricultural noise and power – and I do love the smell of tyre smoke..

Bruno Senna in his uncle’s iconic McLaren. I was looking forward to this and even for a child who grew up disliking Senna it was a very poignant moment. It was a bit of a shame to see him go so slowly but I’m guessing he was giving a photo op to everyone, which is commendable in itself.

Sir Jackie Stewart in Jim Clark’s Indy 500-winning Lotus which has only recently been fully restored. In tribute to his friend, Jackie wore a black helmet similar to that worn by Clark for that famous victory.

Karun Chandhok in the Williams FW08 driven by Keke Rosberg in 1982.

Sam Bird in the 2010 Williams. I’d moved slightly further up the hill to another little enclosed area here.

If you missed them, I posted more videos along with photos from my walk around the Cathedral paddock, the F1 paddock and also one of a 1929 Bugatti. I’ll be concluding this series on Goodwood soon with one final post, featuring a few closing photos and videos from trackside as well as a write-up of my day as a whole.

Goodwood 2010: F1 Paddock

Following my visit to the Cathedral Paddock and a quick stop trackside I made my way to the main paddock area, it is called the Formula 1 Paddock but actually is the home to a little more than that. I’ll recap my trackside visits in my next post, for now let’s take a walk around the Formula 1 Paddock to see what delights it holds.

This is a far busier paddock than the other one as it contains F1 cars, plenty of sportscars from Le Mans and elsewhere as well as various racing bikes, and these are all very popular. It means you can’t get a good look at the cars unless you are either very patient or you can push your way through.

If you’re approaching from the House (and the other paddock) you’ll first pass the ‘assembly area’ which is where cars and drivers form up before a run, unfortunately it was empty when I first came through so I made my way to the first row of cars.

Audi R15 Plus with the ugly tusks on the front (unusually for a car coming straight from Le Mans this one had been washed, normally they leave the dirt on); Next to it is the Audi R8 LMS which raced at the Nurburgring 24 Hours (with Marco Werner’s helmet on the roof – he drove at the Festival);

Next to the Audi R8 LMS was the BMW ‘Art Car’ from this year’s Le Mans, and you can see the other sportscars lined up in that row including the CRS Racing Ferrari from the Le Mans Series, at the very end of the row was the 1991 Silk Cut Jaguar XJR14 which is just gorgeous!

One of the great things about Goodwood is how you can walk alongside and behind the cars to get a good look at them, the by-product being you get to check out the rear view of the adjacent row such as with this 1954 Mercedes W196 sitting behind the Audis. Just around the corner you find other classic Grand Prix cars including the legendary Maserati 250F, and this BRM and Ferrari 246 Dino.

This is a Vanwall and a Brabham. Behind the Vanwall you can see a classic Lotus and the ‘new Lotus’ transporter. There’s a small Indy car presence too, the third shot here shows classic cars from 3 eras, the red car is a Maserati converted from Grand Prix racing.

One of the highlights of the entire day was this 1965 Lotus-Ford in which Jim Clark won the Indy 500, I saw it here last year mid-restoration as a static display and they promised to bring it back this year and run it up the hill, which they did all weekend.

They cars are exhibited in widely-defined collections, so you have a line of sportscars, a line from Lotus, a line from Williams, a line of pre-war GP cars and so forth. I really enjoy seeing the lineage and the development of a team’s cars over time particularly when they wear the same livery.

The Lotus collection including the 72E, 79 and 95T. In the middle photo of the 79 you can see some of the other cars lined up with the Indycar at the end, the car with the gold scheme is the 56B with a turbine engine.

Just as with the lower paddock, in the top paddock you can turn a corner just as an engine near to you is fired up. Here is what I believe is the Tyrrell 006, minus engine cover.

Ahh the sweet DFV. Sorry it is such a short clip and the camera is being waved around, better than nothing right?

A couple of shots of the 1994 Lotus because I’d never seen it before, it is quite a rare car to see in public nowadays. I’ve seen the 1993 Williams here several times but I never pass up an opportunity to take a look at my favourite-looking Formula 1 car of all time.

All that remained to be seen in this paddock were the contemporary Formula 1 cars. I’m afraid I skipped the motorbikes, I do watch MotoGP but I can’t say I’m a huge fan of bike racing in general and know little of its history.

Mercedes GP brought the championship-winning Brawn GP 001 painted in this year’s colours – I understand the PR reasons for doing so but really, a championship winner needs to remain in the original colours.. McLaren brought the MP4/23 from 2008 as well as a 1986 MP4/2C. Williams took Keke Rosberg’s FW08 which Karun Chandhok drove up the hill and what was reported as the 2010 FW32 which Sam Bird drove that day, though usually F1 teams aren’t allowed to run their current cars due to testing restrictions so I’m not sure how true that is. You can see members of HM Armed Forces having a quick tour at Williams.

I actually saw Chandhok and Bird while I was snooping around the Williams garage, unfortunately I only got the back of Karun and my shot of Sam didn’t come out well at all.

He did come back but I was too shy to say anything to the man or get a photo with him, I’m not very good with famous types when I’m on my own, not a clue what to say! Not sure why that guy is smirking at me..

One last thing in the paddock..

Red Bull RB5 being warmed up with the great juxtaposition of the music before and after! For those who have never heard a Formula 1 car in person, know that the music was fairly loud and the car really genuinely is that much louder. Apologies for two videos, I stopped it when the woman walked in front.

That about wraps it up for the content in the main paddock, I’ll be back in a couple of days with a report on another aspect of Goodwood!

This post is part of a series on the 2010 Goodwood Festival of Speed, you can read my previous updates here:

– Outtakes
– 1929 Bugatti
– Cathedral Paddock

All images and the YouTube video used in this post were taken by Patrick Wotton. You may use them if you assign the appropriate credit and link to this blog.

Goodwood 2010: Cathedral Paddock (with video)

There are two paddocks at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The main area is called the Formula 1 Paddock and it holds not just modern and classic F1 cars but also Le Mans, DTM, rally and motorbikes, but there isn’t quite enough room so there is an overspill paddock on the other side of Goodwood House called the Cathedral Paddock. It tends to house specialist stuff like early GP cars, touring cars from down the years, NASCAR Cup cars, old sportscars plus anything from any sub-theme chosen – this year was the Panamerica.

It is an eclectic mix in a secluded, out of the way location which feels as though it could be easily missed by many visitors and I suspect many either don’t know it is there, or choose to ignore it because the good stuff is in the big paddock. I don’t know if that is true but it is always quieter than the rest of the Festival, and I very nearly missed it thinking there wouldn’t be much to interest me, I told myself off and went anyway.

I was immediately glad I did. Where else do you find pre-war Grand Prix cars sitting in a line, opposite a line of Bathurst 1000km racers from the 70s and 80s, and around the corner from a variety of BTCC, NASCAR and Le Mans racers? If your life is F1-only perhaps it won’t interest you but please, if you do like to check out the other stuff do yourself a favour and visit this paddock.

Cathedral Paddock – the cars form up in the foreground before going up the hill;

1905 Darracq 200hp; 1911 Fiat S74 & 1910 Vauxhall Prince Henry; 1925 Bugatti Type 39;

Touring cars made famous at the Bathurst 1000km;

Jaguar, BMW and Chevrolet touring cars from the BTCC and ETCC from the 80s to today; Current BTCC driver Tom Chilton was having a good poke around those cars and chatting to their owners/drivers:

Michael Waltrip’s NASCAR Cup Toyota; NASCAR tyres; the late Dale Earnhardt’s NASCAR Chevy Monte-Carlo – note the FoS organisers have given it the #3 on their entry sticker;

This year’s featured marque was Alfa Romeo, here are some historic cars from decades ago;

Here are some Alfa Romeos from the last 30 years;

Quite a varied mix! The photos don’t show the far more relaxed atmosphere in this area of the Festival, it is a mix between the bustle of the main paddock and the chilled out vibe in the Style et Luxe exhibit alongside this paddock. The best way of expressing this is by showing it to you, this is what it is like in the Cathedral Paddock:

I’ve come to really like this paddock and on my next visit I plan to take my time in there.

All images and the YouTube video used in this post were taken by Patrick Wotton. You may use them if you assign the appropriate credit and link to this blog.