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A Day At Goodwood Revival 2011

I was lucky enough to be able to attend the Goodwood Revival on Sunday, courtesy of Johnnie Walker. Despite having attended five fantastic Festivals of Speed I have never been to the Revival before, so I immediately accepted!

A Unique Atmosphere

The Revival is more than just a normal race meeting for historic/classic racing cars, it has those added Goodwood touches and details we all know and love from the FoS. With spectators in period clothing and the stands selling vintage items, I thought I’d ask Mum to come along to her first ‘big’ race meeting as she’s really into that side of things, regularly attending the local vintage market and so forth.

The first surprise was arriving at the gate and seeing so many of the crowd in period dress. I had expected maybe half of the attendees would do it, and then only in a half-arsed way, but it was a good 80-90% of the crowd! Later as we walked away out to the sticks towards the far end of the circuit it was more like 60-70%, still an impressive figure. It put our minds at rest that if we came back we’d certainly give it a go and not feel silly about it… well maybe only if we stopped for coffee on the motorway.

There were also a lot more ‘acts’ either in their own performance areas or just floating around the crowds at the back of the main grandstands. Dancers, bands, singers, and the Laurel & Hardy boys I’d seen before at the FoS seemed to be following us everywhere as we bumped into them several times, I seem to remember they did that at the Festival too! That’s actually a poor angle of them, in reality they do look a lot like the originals.

This all contributed to a strange crossover in atmosphere between the ‘garden party’ of the Festival, the relaxed feel of historic/classic car racing event with old road vehicles dotted around the track, yet with the attendance levels of a major race meeting. There were easily 50,000 people there by my estimation and likely a lot more.

The Races

Sunday’s card featured seven races, and we arrived in the traffic queue as the second of those got under way. Once we made it in there was an unexplained delay in on-track action, we never found out why but everything was running late by as much as an hour. This meant was had the opportunity to explore all of the above before heading trackside, stopping for a nice organic burger – though I had a hangover and had forgotten that at the Belgian GP it was sausage which was the magic hangover cure, should’ve had that! A cup of tea worked wonders.

The Barry Sheene Memorial Trophy was under way as we walked along the track away from the final corner looking for a space. Neither of us are into motorbikes though I do watch modern MotoGP, it was interesting to compare their 1960s counterparts braking very early in wet conditions.

We got near to Lavant corner and found a good viewing spot, the cars entering our sight directly opposite and heading left-to-right, before driving in an arc to pass in front from right-to-left. The St Mary’s Trophy got under way and there was a great selection of cars of all sizes, from big Ford Galaxies to little Mini Coopers via BMWs, Alfa Romeos, Jaguars and even a Mercedes-Benz 300SE.

Because of the nature of this event I make no apologies for loading this post with big photos and videos where usually I’d have several smaller. I know many don’t like that sort of thing but these are classic cars and deserve to be shown to the world, so an exception can be made here.

St Mary's Trophy (saloons/touring cars 1960-66)

The BMW (2nd in this shot) went on to a dominant win but the Galaxie (leading) and the Mini (3rd) had a race-long battle which was fantastic to watch! The Galaxie usually entered our sight ahead after using its big engine and top speed, but struggled to slow down and turn the corner in this picture, whilst the little Mini barely slowed down at all and nipped through on the inside with far better grip despite having tiny wheels – only for the Galaxie to stretch its legs again straight afterwards.

This was a great race, different types of cars with different capabilities. Touring car racing needs to get back to this and to hell with any thoughts of ‘equalisation’.

Video – St Mary’s Trophy – BMW 1800 leads Galaxie and Mini

The threatening rainclouds dispersed in time for an air display. This was no ordinary air display. This was TEN airworthy Spitfires! Okay I admit they may not all be genuinely from the war, some are rebuilds, but that’s fine if that’s what it takes to keep Spitfires flying. As luck would have it they took off right in front of us!

Spitfire Taking Off

(more Spitfires on my Picasa page)

Then it was the GT race and these were impressive beasts, noisy, tails sliding out on the damp track, fantastic. Yet they are worth tens of millions in some instances!

Video – RAC TT Celebration

Kenny Brack (Indy 500 winner) in the Shelby American Daytona Coupe  leading Martin Brundle (Le Mans winner, ex F1 driver) in the Ferrari 250 GTO owned by Nick Mason. This isn’t a great quality video but I hope it shows the cars well enough. Brack got the tail of his car wiggling under power much more than the others did theirs.

Martin Brundle, Ferrari 250 GTO

This was a good one as well, maybe not so much in the wheel-to-wheel but just the spectacle of it. Despite being slower than last week’s sportscar race at Silverstone these seemed much more impressive. We headed back towards the final corner to watch the end there and as we did so the black clouds drifted over and sure enough, the rain came down very hard.

Wet track for the GTs

The track quickly became treacherous with standing water everywhere and spray being kicked up. In the modern era they’d probably have sent out the Safety Car in such heavy rain. In this case with the race already scheduled to be shortened from 1hr down to 45min, they waved the chequered flag a further 5 minutes early. At a race for historics, particularly one which is delayed, there is no sense in continuing to risk these collectable and highly valued cars.

Another cup of tea sought, we moved location to watch the Tribute to Juan Manuel Fangio and then the short race for 1960s 1.5-litre Grand Prix cars.

The Fangio tribute featured a wide selection of his race cars from his career, in a parade behind a pace car, spanning his early days right through to his succesful Maseratis, Mercedes and so forth. Even his Indy 500 car was there, even though he’d failed to qualify for that race! It was good to see a famous name or two out there in the cars.

John Surtees, Fangio Tribute

We were stood between the last corner ‘proper’ and the makeshift chicane on the main straight. The 60s GP cars took it very gingerly on the wet track, I don’t blame them because if I were in a priceless 50-year old Lotus, Cooper or BRM I’d probably do the same. Still pretty fantastic to see the cars in action even if they were slow.

Grand Prix cars of 1961-1965

Andy Middlehurst took a dominant win by half a minute but the group behind were very close throughout. Paul, Lord Drayson – yes he whose 2010 LMP1 Le Mans car adorns the top of this very blog – finished a creditable 2nd. Ben Collins was also guesting and he was passing cars.. until he slid into the gravel.

We were running out of hours so decided to skip the final race of the day (1950s sportscar world championship) to explore the rest of the Revival.

Paddock

We spent a little while looking around the stalls. Many were the usual sort of thing you find at race meetings or at the Festival of Speed: model cars, books, £30 t-shirts, £300 Steve McQueen ‘Le Mans‘ leather jackets, etc., etc. The rest of the stands were an odd mix of vintage fashions and automotive art.

Surprise of the day? Seeing Sir Stirling Moss signing at one of the book stands surrounded by a crowd! A part of me regrets not getting the book. I like Moss a lot but I didn’t really want that particular book, but I could’ve had a book signed by Stirling Moss.. Irritatingly this was the moment my camera died and I realised the charged batteries I’d brought hadn’t actually been charged.

We ventured through the tunnel to the paddock. Unlike the Festival this paddock was roped off except to badge holders, but they did provide viewing areas around the whole perimeter of it so that was something. It was great to be there though and it looked like the podium finishers for many of the day’s races went out for another celebratory lap, as they came into parc ferme as were stood nearby. I borrowed Mum’s camera to get some up-close shots of those although I’ve not seen how they turned out.

And we (eventually) found the drivers’ club too, but no drivers, it was 5 or 6pm though and most of the racing action had stopped, little potential for seeing famous names. The good thing is that now I know the lay of the land, a future visit can be planned to ‘bump into’ certain drivers as they happen to be walking from place to place.

Oh and we checked out the Earls Court Motor Show as well, some fantastic supercars from the 1960s to today, from E-Type, GTO, Daytona to XJ220, McLarenF1 and Alfa 8C Competizione.

Sadly there wasn’t time to sample some Johnnie Walker (we got lost looking for the right bar.. and I had something of a hangover already!). They didn’t have the big tower from the Festival with the different drinks so I didn’t feel I was missing out so much. I don’t drink a lot of spririts but I’ve started exploring them in recent months so I think I may well buy a bottle as a ‘thank you’.

EDIT – I’ve been contacted by the man from JW who corrected me and said they did indeed serve a variety of drinks, and the bar featured an original Rob Walker car as well. I must say, after VivaF1 sampled some at the FoS and gave a thumbs up I would’ve quite liked to have tried it myself, it was just a shame we ran out of time. Apologies to them for jumping the gun!

In all a great day and I think I’ll be back.

Further Links

You can view my photos at Picasa and I also uploaded videos to YouTube.

Do have a look at these great photos from Lara and from Lynch. Lara also wrote a few words, as did the F1 journalist and writer Maurice Hamilton.

Motor Sport magazine has released a podcast with Sir Stirling Moss, Sir Jackie Stewart, Martin Brundle, Gerhard Berger, Eddie Cheever, Arturo Merzario, Nick Mason, Tom Kristensen, Emmanuele Pirro, Andy Priaulx, and Rauno Aaltonen. I’ve not listened yet but with a line-up like that it can’t be anything other than brilliant.

Thanks once again to Johnnie Walker for the tickets and to Jackie at VivaF1 for making it happen.

Goodwood This Weekend

This weekend is the Goodwood Festival of Speed and I’ll be attending on Friday and Saturday and I’m sure I’ll bump in to a few people from the online community.

Perhaps I’ll even bump into a famous name or two, not that I’ll have any idea what to say as my mind always, always goes blank in that situation. I do plan to get plenty of photos and videos especially because this year there is a big IndyCar presence, including current drivers and cars which never usually happens because until last year they raced at Watkins Glen on this date. This marks a rare UK appearance for many of them, even including the UK drivers who are usually too busy with racing and public appearances in North America (or Brazil) to please the sponsors.

There is also the biggest contemporary F1 presence for some time, possibly ever, and the usual array of classics from across the racing spectrum. Sadly there will be a lack of current sportscar drivers and cars since both the ILMC/LMS and the FIA GT1 series are racing in Italy and Spain respectively. There might also be a smaller motorbike crowd since MotoGP and British Superbikes are also racing. With the huge reputation the FoS enjoys these days I find it amazing racing series deliberately schedule events against it.

This is the first time I’ve attended two days of the Festival so I hope to take it a little easier than usual – they say it is a garden party but I’m always rushing from place to place to see everything in a single day (the site is huge). I hope I can take it easier this time. I’ve also never been on the quieter Friday, usually Saturday and Sunday are my preferred days but both are choc full of fans a few rows deep, you only get really close to the cars late in the day as people thin out but then time becomes limited.

So I hope to report back on Sunday, and who knows I might find time on Friday night for a quick update too. I’ll be commuting the 2 hours each way from home on both days because amazingly the cost of fuel is still lower than the cost of a hotel room on FoS weekend in the Chichester area… ought to have checked earlier I suppose.

I haven’t forgotten about posts for Belgian GP Sunday, LMS Silverstone or the Donington Historic.. will get there eventually!

I’m Watching.. Race of Champions

This weekend I watched the online feed of the Race of Champions. On the whole I enjoyed it, unfortunately there were a great many problems with it this year – and they are fairly similar to problems with past events.

My RoC History

I’ve been disappointed by the Race of Champions in the past. I went to Wembley in 2007 to sit in expensive seats (they were very much over-priced, in hindsight) watching slow cars on a twisty track. Don’t get me wrong, it was a really good event and we had a superb view, it was just that the track was just too tight and too cold so the cars didn’t have any speed at all, so the costs didn’t justify it at all. I heard they became more realistic for 2008.

For the 2010 event I was really pleased to see they had been able to use the different dimensions of the ESPRIT Arena in Düsseldorf to create a faster, wider, more open race track. I’m also pleased they moved it a few weeks earlier and into a venue with heating, which I hope the crowd enjoyed!

The other problem in 2007 was that not enough information was given to the crowd. Stadium commentary from Martin Haven was good when describing the on-track action, not so good at explaining to the fans just who these people in the cars actually were. I swear most of the crowd were not dedicated motorsport fans so had no idea who half the drivers were, yet the whole organisation seemed geared around assumed knowledge among fans. I mean.. no video of their achievements on the big screen- surely this is a fairly basic requirement. To this day my Dad who came with me thinks ’07 RoC winner Mattias Ekstrom is a champion rally driver, I keep telling him he’s DTM but it doesn’t go in. What I’m saying is, the 2007 RoC was a good event with flaws, not the great event I’d expected and hoped for.

I’d not seen the RoC before or since because I didn’t have access to Sky Sports or Eurosport during this period and there was no web streaming. In 2009 there was web streaming but I was at work, for some inexplicable reason they’d held it midweek – all reports from those trying to watch it were that it was diabolical and the worst streaming experience they’d ever encountered.

This Year

This year there was web streaming for a fee, and coverage on MotorsTV which I don’t have. I wasn’t going to watch this year because of all the above problems and to start with I objected to paying for something other championships provide for free these days. But as the day approached I grew more excited for the event, the photos and videos being posted on Twitter by the likes of Heikki Kovalainen, Martin Haven and Neil Cole were really getting me into it. With less than hour before it started I’d decided, I was in. There were other reasons I relented:

  • I wanted to see this excellent match up of names;
  • This is an annual event unable to spread the investment costs of web coverage over a full season, on that basis a small charge is justified;
  • The circuit has been improved considerably, it is faster and more exciting;
  • I didn’t want to miss out on the excitement everyone else was getting caught up in;

Largely I am glad I did.

The Positives

– The actual racing itself was superb, there were some fantastic battles particularly in the VW Sciroccos with push-to-pass. When I first saw them I was convinced they would be the most boring vehicles of the lot, yet they really were the best as it seemed almost all the close finishes came with these cars. I wonder if it was the added bonus of the P2P tactics that brought me in? Not sure. Anyway, overall there were many close finishes and even some photo finishes, brilliant, this is why I got excited about it originally a few years ago. Loved both the Nations Cup and Race of Champions aspects. I have no complaints about the racing whatsoever, it was fantastic.

– As I said above, the track was far better than in 2007 and 2008, which I think was an improvement again over the Stade de France layout. I can’t speak for 2009 as like most people in Europe I was at work during that event and the streaming apparently didn’t work anyway.

– I liked the inclusion of the VW Sciroccos and the Audi R8s.

– Moving Martin Haven to join John Hindhaugh in the TV/online booth was a good decision, it didn’t always work (indeed for Saturday’s round-robin action they were thoroughly confused) but I thought when it did work it was really good (with the caveat of the criticisms below). Neil Cole and David Croft were top notch pit/paddock reporters and didn’t put a foot wrong all weekend.

– A big positive this year was the use of social media, @RaceofChampions was tweeting furiously throughout (including retweets of commentators, pit reporters and even some of the competing drivers – many of whom were posting photos/videos). Don’t underestimate how useful this was for catching things missed elsewhere and I relayed many messages on to my followers in case they weren’t following the account.

– Holding an event in Germany. Excellent choice.

– Despite what I’m about to say below I really did enjoy the event, the competition and cameradarie is everything it should be and more.

The… Less Than Positive

While the racing was good that’s not to say the weekend went smoothly. There were many problems, both major and minor. Several of them were fixed for the second day, some will need a bit more of a rethink on the part of the organisers.

– We have to start with the major problem first: the paid-for web feed was abysmal during Saturday’s Nations Cup. It stuttered, stopped and looped so many times it drove everyone to distraction and made the event unwatchable for a while. It started really well with a good quality feed so I wonder if the problems were caused by demand? I forget how long it was down for, it kept requiring a reset of the page (simple F5 and press Play again did the trick) which didn’t always work. Several of us missed a chunk of the Nations Cup because of it. Sidepodcast even gave up watching and demanded a refund, both actions I disagreed with vehemently because I had every expectation it would improve and it did, but the fact remains the stream should have worked well enough not to cause that reaction. It did eventually get going again without cutting out, but it was still scratchy with buffering and small amounts of looping and jumping. It wasn’t until Sunday’s running that the problems were truly cured, Sunday’s running suffered no problems whatsoever, it was flawless. It left me wondering if perhaps in 2011 they ought to offer Friday’s free practices live in order to shake out all these bugs, get them fixed for the real competition.

The stream was more than a little irritating and unprofessional. Had it been a free stream I’d have abandoned it just as early as others did without hesitation. Because I’d paid for it I was determined to keep trying until I absolutely knew it wouldn’t work, because frankly I’ve sat through enough web feeds of live sporting events to know they are incredibly tempermental and you just have to wait it out. This isn’t like some press conference in a hall somewhere, it is far more complicated, and equally these people don’t have BBC-levels of resources to provide their level of streaming. It means patience is required. Of course, if Sunday had been just as bad I’d have been queueing up for my money back.

There were two really bad instances and after that it got better, relatively. I did have to refresh some more times which was annoying, later that turned to buffering, frozen picture then replaying itself for 2-3 seconds as it sorted itself out which left me a minute or so behind. This kind of behaviour is what I expect from a web feed in my experience. For me it is is rare to expect a live web stream to work 100% flawlessly so I expect buffering and stuttering to some degree – then when it does work seamlessly I’m left impressed. The earlier stuff with the cut-outs and the dropping back 5 minutes were totally unacceptable though, more so since we paid for it.

– I am not sure what happened during the Nations Cup, it was one of two things:  Either 1) the commentary team had been given the wrong information beforehand, or 2) the organisers of the event changed the format at the last second. The opening rounds were set up like the World Cup, a round-robin competition with the drivers finishing 1st and 2nd in the group progressing to the next round, based on number of wins and with a tiebreak on time. Unfortunately Haven & Hindy seemed to think it was still the best-of-3 knockout competition of previous years. When they figured out it was a group format, they didn’t know what the ‘Time’ column meant on the on-screen captions. They knew it was a tiebreak but didn’t know if it was cumulative time, best times, or something else. All this stuff should have been prepped and learned beforehand, if it was their error I’d be quite surprised (but not impossible) because they are experienced guys so I’m willing to believe it was either a late change or someone had given them the wrong details. Haven and Hindy were left holding the baby, trying to work with it but really ought to have given up at one stage and went with the flow. I like to think I know enough about these guys by now that they’d do the proper research before the event to know what the format was supposed to be – surely? – so for the time being I’ll blame the RoC organisers. I might be wrong, it could be the guys’ fault. Sunday was pretty much flawless, there were a few calls of a driver leading when I was sure it was the other one.. but that could’ve been me.

– The TV coverage was on MotorsTV only, which was a shame. I quite like Motors and they do reasonably well on a tiny budget but their audience share is negligible. The Race of Champions should be on Eurosport, ESPN or Sky Sports. I don’t want MotorsTV to go out of business but ‘champions’ ought to be represented somewhere with a higher profile.

– Organising an event in Germany was brilliant. Doing so when their main domestic championship was out of the country was not. I’ve no idea who fixed a date first, it could be DTM’s fault – either way it was a disappointment. I have to assume RoC and ITR/DTM consulted each other and couldn’t reach agreement on a date. Shame. DTM champ Mattias Ekstrom is a past RoC champion and he demonstrated his Audi at Wembley.

Minor Issues

– The driver line-ups are still curious and there are some strange choices, many seemingly flouting the ‘Champions’ name. I still don’t know how Albuquerque, Pastrana and Foust qualify even though they are great personalities and great talents – indeed the first named won Sunday’s RoC so he’s no slouch and I think this event could be the making of the man. But.. if this is a true Race of Champions, what had they won before this weekend? It might be that some of them actually have won things – we weren’t told. Even with people as good as Kovalainen, people maybe ought to have been told he qualifies as winner of the 2004 Renault World Series (or Nissan, as was). And while the BTCC champion in my eyes is a perfectly valid addition, do many people outside the UK know who Jason Plato is? Do many in Europe know who Carl Edwards is, for that matter? I’m not talking dedicated racing freaks like us, I mean normal people! I do completely understand that not all invitees might be there, due to contractual obligations and such like.

It goes back to what I said before about telling the audience who people are. Haven/Hindy did a fair job but you have to wonder if it should be left to the commentary to do it. There were some great little segments introducing each vehicle before each round and these began to be repeated a little too often – could it hurt to have something similar for drivers in that space in the coverage?

– The failing of the circuit timing (apparently a new system) would not normally be forgiveable. As an end-of-year knockaround I’m not quite so bothered as I would be for a major championship event, and I wouldn’t be at all if it had remained a knockout format start to finish as the timing would be irrelevant. Since the tiebreaker for progressing to the semi-finals was based on time (though we’re still not sure how – it seemed to be the two best times added together) and the system was broken, you do have to wonder if any of the drivers or teams were promoted incorrectly.

– Tell the drivers what is happening, the pit reporters shouldn’t be the ones to tell them they are in the final.

Summary

Despite many flaws I really thoroughly enjoyed the Race of Champions. It may not seem like it but I’m trying to provide constructive feedback! Once again it was a good event with flaws, not a truly great event, and the reason I’m being critical is because the potential is there for everyone to see, it is so tantalisingly close. I don’t know many that don’t like the RoC as a concept, the execution could be a little better that’s all. If they are able to address even half of these issues – web streaming is a must – then it will be even better.

I have every intention of watching next year and I expect to see improvements.

On The Limit: Heikki at the Race of Champions

On Friday at the Race of Champions in Dusseldorf, many of the competing drivers did practice laps with various cars. As you may know, a passenger always rides alongside the driver for every run throughout the weekend, whether it be competition winner, sponsor, whatever. On the practice day the passengers were the members of the media.

Neil Cole (of Dave’s sadly ended WRC coverage) is acting as pit reporter for the event, he brought a camera with him for his run alongside Heikki Kovalainen in this Porsche, which I have shamelessly stolen until he tells me off. What you should definitely do is keep checking Neil’s YouTube account because he’s uploading things all weekend.

Enjoy!