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Goodwood 2010 Video: 1929 Bugatti

While you wander around the two paddocks at Goodwood, or indeed any race paddock anywhere, you’ll encounter cars being warmed up ready for their next run. Today was obviously no exception, yet the eclectic nature of Goodwood is such that you don’t know what you’ll find when you head towards the engine noise and break through the crowd of people around it.

The first car I saw being revved up this year was this 1929 Bugatti, one of the top Grand Prix car of the era. These days it looks like an old dusty relic but it has a ton of history behind it, and can still make a noise and go fast up the hill.

Goodwood 2010: Outtakes

I had great day at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, it seemed I was constantly doing something and the day went by in a flash. I think I’m coming to the realisation that it deserves two days, there is just so much there now that you have no hope of covering it in a single day, I felt like I was rushing from place to place to see everything I wanted to see.

I’ve not been home all that long so I’ve not sorted through my photos and videos just yet, and I’m too tired tonight to write a proper blog post about my day. How about a teaser?

As always with any motorsport event it takes a little while to get your eye in, and of course for a while you just want to enjoy the event and take in the sights, sounds and smells. Trying to time your shot for that small gap between people’s heads is also quite tricky when you are panning the camera. This means my camerawork was quite dodgy for a while so to tease you until I go through them properly, here are some pretty horrible outtakes…

Hamilton takes an old McLaren up the hill — Outtake: Lewis Hamilton, McLaren-TAG MP4/2C (thanks for the magazine, luv)

Outtake: Jean-Eric Vergne, Red Bull RB5... almost

1989 Lotus-Judd 101... he booted the throttle and stuffed it in the hay, breaking the front wing. This is from the big-screen TV.

What, you weren’t expecting a proper update straight away, were you?

Off to Goodwood..

I’m attending the Goodwood Festival of Speed on Sunday. I won’t be posting updates from the venue as I expect to be too busy, so I’m not even bringing my netbook, but do keep an eye on my Twitter account for the odd update and photo during the day – I hope to get Twitvid working too but that may be too big a drain on my data plan.

I’m attending the Goodwood Festival of Speed on Sunday, my 4th visit. It has grown every year and I doubt I’ll cover everything I want to see but if you accept that before you get there it is hard to have a bad time.

I won’t be posting to the blog until I get home, but do keep an eye on my Twitter account for the odd update and photo during the day. If you happen to tweet me don’t be offended if you don’t get a reply until much later, it means I’m enjoying the event!

Goodwood FoS: Pt.3 – Trackside

At the end of the last post I had three hours to kill before Jenson Button appeared on the Mercedes stage. I wasn’t all too fussed about that actually, I only wanted to go because you don’t see Formula 1 drivers every day and I actually knew he was going to be there rather than chancing a meeting in the paddock.

It was 12pm and I was starting to get hungry. I headed to the concessions to check out the prices. £5.50 for a basic burger, £7 for a decent one. I take the packet of McCoys crisps from my bag and walk on in search of an event programme.

You need a programme at Goodwood because without it you don’t know when to get trackside, and you don’t have a hope of planning your whereabouts to coincide with drivers arriving/departing the paddock. Relieved of £12, but given a ‘free’ radio (ok I’m paying for it, just tell me I am, yeah?) and another magazine about the people attending, I immediately thumb the programme to figure out what to do next: go to the track, then explore paddock. The programme seller was positioned between gaps in hospitality marquees so I got my first good look at this year’s sculpture.

Audi Sculpture, Goodwood House, from 2009 Goodwood Festival of Speed

I cross the bridge and immediately spot celebrity chef and 2008 Mille Miglia entrant James Martin signing autographs. I choose not to do same, or even get a photo, because I don’t care about James Martin.

Cars are starting to run up the hill again now so I take up station by the bridge to watch – this is the sportscar section and I want to see the new Audi, Peugeot and Aston in the flesh! First though, a massive group of Porsches. I’m sure if you were a fan in their era you would have found this section riveting, and they did look and sound great, but really.. there were a LOT of them.

1969 Porsche 917K, from 2009 Goodwood Festival of Speed

One of the drawbacks at Goodwood is the need to rub elbows to get anything like a decent view if you are not in a grandstand. The covered grandstands cost a fortune, though there are freely available open grandstands dotted around the place – unfortunately not in this location. This meant trying to peer around the side of the people next to you, who were trying to do the same to the people next to them! When they stay back you can get a really good view.

Finally the new cars arrived! You can see the Pug in the set of four above, it wasn’t a good photo unfortunately – you couldn’t hear it coming so it was a rush job!
The Aston shot was much better.