Goodwood Festival of Speed 2017

Goodwood FoS 2017
Friday 29th June 2017

Here in the UK we are so lucky to have what must be the best auto show on the planet; and I’ve been this year and a few times before. All pictures are mine, research is the result of a mis-spent youth and things I learned at the Festival.

Here’s my take on it, others are available but unless you were there; sorry man you missed out. Buckle up for a ride into a world of pure auto porn!

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This year I waited an hour and a half for a Jaguar Experience, saw hypercars, world firsts, inhaled pure petrol (gas) and exceeded all recommended noise limits (well my buzzing head thinks so); see more on all this later.

Few paddock legends below and an explanation:

Sadly this year we lost the motorsport legend John Surtees CBE who is the only guy to have won the world championship on two wheels (1956, 1958-60 with Norton, Vincent, Triumph and MV Augusta) and four (1964 with Ferrari in F1). This guy was such a gentleman and was Honorary President of the Mercedes Benz Club in the UK; I can’t understand why he never got a knighthood. He even had his own racing team Surtees Racing Organisation which ran sports cars, F2, F3, CanAm plus others ending with F1 in 1978. So this year Goodwood brought as many of his winning cars and bikes together the Honda is shown below.

This is a 1967 Honda RA300 which John drove and won the Italian GP that year; it is a 2982cc 90-degree V12. It develops 480PS and weighs just 590kg and it sounded super sick! A big team from Honda came with this car as it is the 50th anniversary of the win, a mix of Japan and UK employees who were so excited but tender and precise with the car. True to form it started first time didn’t take much running up to temperature and got on with it unlike the LeMans winning Audi e-tron which failed to run. This car was jointly developed when Surtees acted as matchmaker with Lola to develop the monocoque chasis (taken from a cut down version of their T90 Indycar) in just 6 weeks.

This was the entry to the private Martini Drivers Club which showcased their sponsorship of many great championship winning rally cars; here we have a Ford Focus RS (I think this is Colin McRae’s 1999 car), a Lancia Delta Integrale and a Lancia S4.

Now Mercedes, my weakness but I’ve been such a dumbass as I forgot to identify all the cars. Here goes:

The first I forget although I had a model of it as a kid which is worth an easy £200 if I can just dig it out of my parents garage. The second is probably the best grand prix car ever made. I give you the Mercedes W125 1937 F1 car which although a development of the allegedly stiff but floppy aged W25 brought together the legends of Rudolf Uhlenhaut as tech Director and Alfred Neubauer as team boss to develop a super reliable world beater. It has an inline-8 cylinder supercharged 5.66 Litre engine putting out over 600PS. With a central gas pedal, drum brakes and a power to weight ratio to shame most supercars this is one scary mother that took another 40 years to be beaten for power in F1.

Goodwood had sooooo many bikes this year in tribute to Surtees but I am clueless on them, the cute little red thing is a Lambretta Siluro from 1951.

Two of my all time favourite F1 cars from when it was actually interesting now. First up is Nigel Mansell’s Williams Renault FW14B (aka ‘red’ 5) bristling with cutting edge tech like semi-auto gearbox and active suspension which won him the 1992 drivers championship. Second is Ayrton Senna’s 1991 V12 McLaren MP4-6 which won him the drivers championship that year and the constructors for the team also (the Prost/Senna years were fun); it’s a bit sad to see the perfectionist Ron Dennis being ousted from McLaren after 37 years.

Enough priceless racing exotica, what about metal you can buy. Here is some production stuff that ‘floats my boat’.

This is Ariel Cars off-road buggy version of the popular Atom track weapon. It is powered by the same 2400cc 225PS Honda 4-cyl engine (again with optional supercharger), it costs £36,000.

Here we have the newly released Aston Martin DB11; it uses a brand new chassis and new V12 engine with many Mercedes-AMG hidden (and not so hidden) components as a result of a tie-up between the two manufacturers announced by Dr Ulrich Bez in 2013 which was backed by Kuwait money I think (although no money was said to have been actually exchanged - odd). A certain Mr Bond will be pleased!

Right, now my Jaguar Experience after an hour and a half wait it was all over in 3 minutes and 30ish seconds. But what a ride, I was out in the red car below and we did donuts in the little power slide area; man what a thrill and what a car/driver in the F-Type V8 ragtop. The video on track was taken in 2015 as phone died.

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The Jaguar stand also had the debut of the iPace which is their concept electric hatchback which is quite small for a Jag but looked great. Deffo looks to me like the lines of the rumoured entry into the A-class/1-series territory to me which is a good omen from these shots.

Ah McLaren, just love what these guys and girls are doing in Worthing. This car is stunning but it is essentially a posh paintjob, the McLaren 720S ‘Velocity’ is an advert for McLaren Special Operations to highlight the personalisation options available. The paint is a beautiful blending of Volcano Red and Nurello Red with red-tinted Carbon Fibre bonnet. The engine is the ‘regular’ 720PS 4 Litre twin-turbo V8 with electric wizardry for a 0-60(mph) time of 2.9 seconds.

This is a truly special car, one of 5 pre-production F1 development ‘mules’ built in 1993. In 1998 (the year I bought my first car) this actual car under the guidance of sports car racer Andy Wallace set the Guinness world record for the fastest naturally aspirated car at 240.14mph (386.47kph) in Germany. This record has never been beaten since. An F1 or a Ferrari F40 is a hard call.

This was a bit of fun but how cool is this Lego 720S.

This is a bit special; another 50 year anniversary but actually linked to Goodwood. One of only 3 of the Papaya Orange McLaren M6A-1 which won the 1967 CanAm championship, designed by Bruce McLaren himself and others. It tested at Goodwood in June of 1967 before its debut at Elkhart Lake. I has a 5.9 Litre Chevy V8 and was by far the loudest thing of the day (even the Eurofighter Typhoon display didn’t hold a candle to this).

Well that’s it folks. Hope you enjoyed this and if you ever get the chance to go to the Festival of Speed you will have the time of your life and meet some great people plus get to speak to motoring legends and touch real exotic machinery as well as inhale lots of fumes and get deafened.